Remixing the Art Curriculum

Emiel Heijnen
Remixing
the
Art Curriculum

Remixing the Art Curriculum
How Contemporary Visual Practices
Inspire Authentic Art Education
proefschrift
ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor
aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof. dr. Th.L.M. Engelen
volgens het besluit van het College van Decanen,
in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 17 september 2015
om 12.30 uur precies
door
Emiel Johannes Matheus Gerardus Heijnen
geboren op 10 juni 1970
te Tegelen

Promotoren:
Prof. dr. A.M. Smelik
Prof. dr. F.H. Haanstra (Universiteit Utrecht)
Manuscript commissie:
Prof. dr. C.B. Smithuijsen
Prof. dr. J.J.H. van den Akker (Nationaal expertisecentrum
leerplanontwikkeling)
Prof. dr. B.P. van Heusden (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Dr. E.M. van Meerkerk
Prof. dr. M.L.L. Volman (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
This project would not have been possible without the financial support of
the Amsterdam School of the Arts and the Radboud University Nijmegen

Emiel Heijnen
Remixing
the
Art Curriculum
How Contemporary Visual
Practices Inspire Authentic
Art Education

Table of contents
Acknowledgements 7
IDENTIFICATION PHASE
1 Context, Aim and Research Design 10
Introduction 11
Significance 14
Context and problem definition 15
Aim and research questions 19
Methodology 22
Organization of the dissertation 31
INVESTIGATION PHASE
Introduction to chapters 2 and 3 37
2 Informal Visual Networks 38
Three perspectives on learning 40
Communities of practice 41
Participatory culture 43
Informal production groups formed around popular culture 46
Defining informal visual networks 52
Conclusion 55
3 Visual Culture Learning Communities 58
Methodology 61
Why students form visual culture communities 63
How visual culture communities function 65
What participants learn in visual culture groups 67
Self and peer initiated learning 70
Conclusion 74
Postscript to chapters 2 and 3 77
Introduction to chapters 4 and 5 83
4 Social and Collaborative Turns in Contemporary Art 84
Social movements in the ambiguous field of globalized art 85
The liquid world metaphor as artistic fuel 87
Art at the service of life 89
Collaboration as an artistic strategy 94
Don’t hate the media, become the media 97
Criticism 100
Conclusion 102
5 Nine Socially Engaged Art Practices 104
Research questions and methodology 107
Analysis of the data 125
Domain: concerns, interests and competences 125
Community: joint activities, information sharing and
peer learning 133
Production: shared repertoire of socially engaged art practices 142
Conclusion 150
4

6 A New Model for Authentic Art Education 154
Research question and methodology 155
From artistic practice to educational design principle 156
The contents of authentic art education 160
Pedagogical principles of authentic art education 165
Conclusion 171
PROTOTYPING AND ASSESSMENT PHASE
7 Prototyping and Assessment: introduction 176
Methodology 179
8 The Prototyping Phase 188
Summer school 189
Analysis of the design process during the prototyping phase 190
Prototyping phase: conclusions 196
Case sheets section 201
9 The Assessment Phase 234
9a How teachers perceived the impact of the courses 235
Meaningful connections between professional art,
popular culture and societal issues 235
Knowledge is constructed in complete & complex task situations 242
The class operates as a learning community in which
various forms of expertise are shared 247
9b The students respond: analysis of learner reports 251
Participants and analysis procedure 252
Open-ended questions 252
Closed-ended questions 263
Assessment phase: conclusions 269
REFLECTION PHASE
10 Conclusions and Discussion 274
Results 276
Reflection and implications 283
SUMMARY (DUTCH)
Samenvatting van Remixing the Art Curriculum 297
APPENDIXES
1 Program overview Remix Culture summer schools 309
2 Topic interview teachers 310
3 Teacher interviews – code trees with identified themes 312
4 Learner report – student questionnaire 313
5 Learner report – coding schemes 318
Tables and figures 323
References 325
Curriculum Vitae 339
5

Remixing the Art Curriculum
6

Acknowledgements
When I interviewed artist and hacktivist Evan Roth during this
research project, he told me that the art market has largely maintained
the idea of the artist as a solitary genius, as opposed to
the movie industry where long credit lists have been the standard
for decades. Although I consider myself neither an artist nor a genius,
I think that a PhD research project is often imagined as a lonely,
secluded activity that brings the romanticized image of an artist’s
practice to mind. I cannot deny that my research included extensive
solitary phases, but on the first pages of this book I would like to
emphasize that this project would have been impossible without the
cooperation and participation of many others. The credit list below is
a tribute to the ‘cast and crew’ that enabled me to complete the job.
Thank you all!
Cast
Informal art groups
IvesOne & crew
Parti Art Collective
Petra Katanic & crew
All creative producers from Chicago,
Helsinki, Istanbul, Montreal and
Budapest
Artists
Authentic Boys
Grupo BijaRi
Aram Bartholl
Jeanne van Heeswijk
The Propeller Group
Evan Roth
Pilvi Takala
José Antonio Vega Macotela
Wandschappen
Teachers and their students
Naomi Aardema
Petra van Beuningen
Rosemarie de Brouwer-Kock
Daniele Campagnoli
Noortje Dirks
Renske Gasper
Johan Gielen
Mijke de Haan
Astrid Hermes
Minke Kampman
Marcel van Kerkvoorde
Anne Kraaijeveld
Julianna Laczkó
Carolien Schellekens
Doran Schmaal
Cynthia Schoorl
Miranda Simon
Merit Tieman
Charlotte Vester-Rutten
Marloes de Vries
Crew
Research supervisors
Anneke Smelik
Folkert Haanstra
Co-researchers
Juan Carlos Castro
Kerry Freedman
Mira Kallio-Tavin
Andrea Kárpáti
Interview assistant
Sanne Versteeg
Remix Culture coaches
Michiel Koelink
Suzanne Rademaker
Remix Culture assistants
Sanne Beemsterboer
Linda Rusconi
Expert panel
Paul Duncum
Renske de Groot
Mirjam van Tilburg
Quantitative data expert
Talita Groenendijk
Transcriptions
Aline Knip
Chris van Meeuwen
Joska van Oosten
Jasper Wilshaus
Graphic Design
Kummer & Herrman
Translations
The Text Company
Peer reflection
Melissa Bremmer
Marjo van Hoorn
Carolien Hermans
Financial support
Amsterdam School of the Arts
Radboud University Nijmegen
All students and colleagues of the
Amsterdam School of the Arts and
Radboud University including:
Tessel Bauduin
Alyda Buik
Marianne Gerner
Claire Goedman
Bart Gijswijt
Sanne Kersten
Hannie Kortland
Edwin van Meerkerk
Mieke Mekkink
Mareke McAlpine-Geraedts
Adri Schreuder
Martijn Stevens
Lianne Toussaint
Jaap Vinken
AHK staff
Rafael van Crimpen
Bridget Kievits
Jet de Ranitz
Robert Smit
Maria Wüst
Special mention
Joost van den Boogert
Leontine Broekhuizen
Tobi Damen
Marlous van Gastel
Maarten Hamel
Rixt Hulshoff Pol
Daphne Kann
Steffen Keuning
Michiel Maas
Jo Moonen
Karlijn Muller
Myrthe Nagtzaam
Emily Paige
Bart Rutten
Eser Yagci
Moniek Warmer
Joske van Zomeren
PhD defense team
Alexander Kann
Arjan van Meeuwen
Exercise trainer
Chef
Moral support
Jolanda Reinink
7

INVEST
APP
Remixing the Art Curriculum
IDENTIF
PROTOTYP
ASS
REF
S
8

How Contemporary Visual Practises Inspire Authentic Art Education
ICATION
IGATION
phase
ING AND
ESSMENT
LECTION
UMMARY
ENDIXES
9

Remixing the Art Curriculum
1
Context, Aim
and Research
Design
I believe that the school must represent present life - life
as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on
in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground.
I believe that education which does not occur through
forms of life, or that are worth living for their own sake,
is always a poor substitute for the genuine reality and
tends to cramp and to deaden.
– John Dewey (1897, p. 293)
10
Chapter 1

Identification phase
Introduction
A few months ago, V., the 16-year-old daughter of my friend M., returned
from school with an art assignment that she did not fully comprehend. Her
art teacher had given the class the task to design an LP album cover and V.
asked her father (a former art educator) to advise her on how to combine
typography and images. When M. recommended that she use desktop publishing
software, V. shook her head. She loved the idea of creating the cover
digitally but the teacher had prescribed that the use of computers was not
allowed. When discussing the assignment further, M. found out that V. did
not know what an LP was, as she had never seen a real vinyl record in her life.
A few weeks later V. finished the assignment according to the original criteria
and was very pleased with the end results and the grade she received.
The incident above is exemplary because it highlights the yawning
gap that can appear between art education in school and developments in
the world outside it. V’s record cover assignment refers to a music technology
and consumer culture that has little significance for teenagers who find
and share their music online. Furthermore, the restriction that digital production
methods were not allowed indicates that the assignment lacked a
connection with the trans media practices of contemporary graphic designers.
What I find the most intriguing aspect of this anecdote is that smart,
articulate students like V. tend to accept a given art curriculum, even when
it lacks connection with their life outside school. It tells us that teachers cannot
blindly assume that their curriculum is significant and up-to-date if
their students do not criticize it.
Processes of globalization and digitalization increase the gap
between the way students deal with creative production outside and inside
school institutions (Buckingham, 2007; Ito et al., 2010). For teachers in art
education, globalizing developments present a dual challenge: like any
teacher, they must reconsider the form of the education they provide in a
changing, mediatized participation society. Moreover, the curriculum of art
education is also formed by the developments of art and visual culture in a
globalized world. Teachers of art face a situation in which the traditional
content of the subject, as well as materials and techniques, are being opened
up to discussion by developments outside school, both in the informal artistic
practices of their students as in the practices of professional artists.
However, several scholars have concluded that art curricula in schools tend
to focus on visual culture’s past, rather than on its present (Downing, 2005;
Harland, 2008; Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison, & Weigel, 2006;
Steers, 2007; Wilson, 2003). Such art curricula present art as an extinct cultural
phenomenon, rather than as a dynamic field and specific domain of
contemporary human experience in which students are active participants.
Authentic art education (Haanstra, 2001, 2011) is a pedagogical
approach that criticizes the isolated and anachronistic nature of traditional
art education and its lack of connection to both contemporary professional
art practice and to the needs of the student. Authentic art education is not a
neutral concept. It advocates an art curriculum based on social-constructivist
Context, Aim and Research Design
11

Remixing the Art Curriculum
learning principles that aim for meaningful connections between both the
needs and interests of the student and the professional world of art. This
vision entails that the subject matter and pedagogy of art education are
acknowledged as inherently dynamic, which challenges art educators to
align existing curricula and pedagogies with present-day visual production
and learning forms among young people and art professionals.
Adams has argued that art education engaging with the practices
of contemporary art production requires “dynamic pedagogies that
demand much of the relatively standardized and regulated curricular of
primary and secondary schools” (Adams, 2012, p. 689). However, schools are
presently not always eager to provide a space for such dynamic pedagogies.
Art teachers are often confronted with the reality that educational policy
makers are placing state-funded education increasingly in an economic perspective:
schooling is presented as an endeavor aimed at preparing children
and teenagers as successful future participants in a post-industrial economy
(Biesta, 2014; Nussbaum, 2010). This approach is accompanied by an emphasis
on the measurement and international comparison of academic student
achievement. This development puts a pressure on school subjects without
a direct ‘economic value’ and that do not produce easy quantifiable or comparable
results, like art education. At the same time, the economic justification
of public schooling also suggests opportunities for art educators. Skills
associated with art and art education like creativity, critical thinking and
problem solving have been embraced by policy makers as key competences
for citizenship in a post-industrial economy (Ananiadou & Claro, 2009; Thijs,
Fisser, & Van der Hoeven, 2014). To be able to participate in a society in which
creativity and innovation are key drivers, students need ‘competencies for
innovation’, internationally referred to as ‘21st century skills’ (Dede, 2010).
Several theorists have even claimed that artists are model employees of the
21st century, because successful careers in both the arts and the knowledge
economy require similar mind-sets and competences (Florida, 2002; Gielen
& De Bruyne, 2009; Steyerl, 2011). This places art educators in a thought-provoking
dilemma: the economic justification of public schooling tends to
reduce art education to the status of useless frill, whereas that same economic
viewpoint advocates the development of 21st century skills that are,
in part, modeled by contemporary artists and designers.
According to Biesta (2014), the economic justification of public
schooling and the focus on the accountability and controllability of learning
outcomes deprives the education process of one of its most crucial
aspects: risk. Biesta argues that risk should be embraced in education, as
education is not a mechanical process but a dialogical, difficult, slow and at
times frustrating process between teachers and students, without guaranteed
outcomes. Taking the risk out of education is neither possible nor
desirable, especially in the context of an art curriculum that strives to
incorporate authentic and actual forms of art production (Hardy, 2012).
Contemporary art is risky by default because it involves participants who
engage in complex processes with uncertain goals and outcomes that
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Identification phase
require creativity, cooperation, experimentation and play, rather than
following fixed procedures or providing predefined answers.
In this dissertation I argue that authentic art education is a
relevant concept in the contemporary educational discourse because it
acknowledges art as a dynamic and autonomous learning domain with
specific ways of thinking, acting, and being. As such, it challenges school
policies aimed at narrowing the curriculum to subjects and learning
activities that are highly instrumental, controllable and accountable.
Learning theorists have argued that schools tend to give little attention to
the fundamental aspects of a discipline and the particular roles that practitioners
play within these domains (Ford & Forman, 2006). Future citizens
of the 21st century should not only learn context-free facts and skills, but
distinctive ways of thinking about the world, as constituted by major
scholarly disciplines like science, history and the arts (Gardner, 1999, 2011).
The strength of authentic art education is that it seeks to establish meaningful
relationships between the professional art discipline and the student’s
everyday artistic practice (Haanstra, 2001). Consequently, authentic
art education creates opportunities for bottom-up innovation in the art
curriculum. It accentuates the role of art educators as reflective practitioners,
rather than as the executors of routine tasks. Reflective practitioners
allow risk, surprise and confusion in their profession and carry out experimentations
to generate new understandings of their practice (Schön, 1991).
Art educators are challenged to operate as agents of change who study
relevant art practices outside school and implement them in their curriculum.
Authentic art education is therefore not only a concept for art pedagogy,
but also for educational design and innovation. It acknowledges
that art education needs educational art experts who are able to balance
embracing and controlling risk.
The main objective of Remixing the Art Curriculum is to explore and
revise the original educational design principles of authentic art education
in the light of contemporary informal and professional visual production
and to investigate them in varied school contexts. Educational design principles
can be described as heuristic statements that “enable teachers and
instructional designers to use well-researched ideas as guidelines for their
own efforts to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes”
(Herrington & Reeves, 2011, p. 595). Through literature and empirical study I
will investigate the extent to which the present-day approaches to learning
among professional artists and young people offer new reference points for
the content and didactics of authentic art education. This will lead to a
revised educational framework of authentic art education that assists art
educators to underpin and design their curriculum and structure their
teaching practice. A varied group of teachers has used the model to develop
a series of lessons that they subsequently implemented in their own teaching
practice. In the concluding chapter I will investigate the effectiveness of
the model and the perception of authentic art education among educators
and their students in different empirical contexts.
Context, Aim and Research Design
13

Remixing the Art Curriculum
Significance
The significance of my study is that it provides an insight in the relationships
between educational theory, curriculum design and school practice.
It makes an original contribution to areas of research related to authentic
learning and art education as it proposes a new model for authentic art
education based on contemporary visual production, which I tested and
evaluated in various school contexts. The research offers some important
understandings into the ways of thinking, acting, and being of today’s visual
producers, both in the informal and the professional domain. It exposes
international developments towards learning within the visual arts and
among young people’s informal visual communities from which insights
can be obtained that inform the designing and teaching practice of art educators
in schools. My empirical studies into informal and professional visual
practices are relevant in the light of the research agenda as proposed by
Winner, Goldstein, and Vincent-Lancrin (2013). Winner and colleagues performed
a large-scale review study of empirical research to the transfer
effects of arts education on other school subjects and on general skills like
creativity and critical thinking. In their conclusions, the authors argued that
a closer examination of the habits of mind that are developed in the arts
domain itself is conditional for good research on transfer. These habits of
mind that are infused by studying art were identified by Hetland, Winner,
Veenema, and Sheridan (2013) and include develop craft, engage and persist,
understand art worlds, stretch and explore, envision, express, reflect, and
observe. My research on informal and professional art makers can contribute
to Winner and colleagues’ call because it includes an analysis of the
motivations and (learning) skills that young people and art professionals
perceive as important in their visual practices.
Another significant aspect of my research is that it explores interdisciplinary
relationships between media and art education. It is aimed at
establishing connections between situated learning practices around popular
visual culture and professional art in the context of school curricula.
Most research to date has tended to focus on either popular culture or on
professional art as sources for art education. Freedman and Stuhr (2004);
Manifold (2009) and Wilson (2011) have argued for an approach in which the
topics and styles of learning young people develop thanks to the popular
media and technology can serve as examples for art education. Buschkühle
(2007), Gude (2007), Adams (2012), and Groenendijk, Hoekstra, and Klatser
(2012) have argued that the practices of contemporary artists should play an
essential role in the present art education curriculum. In Remixing the Art
Curriculum, ‘popular culture-based’ and ‘contemporary art-based’ approaches
are combined, implemented and studied in local educational practices,
coordinated by the design principles of authentic art education.
With regard to research methodology, Remixing the Art Curriculum
adds substance to the growing body of knowledge associated with designbased
research, specifically in the context of art education. It presents
empirical data of contemporary art production, educational design and
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Chapter 1

Identification phase
implementation processes, retrieved from and with informal visual producers,
artists, teachers and students. The method and results of my
research project are therefore not only of academic value, but also intend
to contribute to the practices of art educators who want to update and
innovate their practice with regard to today’s developments in visual
production and art pedagogy.
Context and problem definition
Before describing the research questions and methodology I will explain
the backgrounds of authentic art education, as this pedagogical approach
is used as a theoretical framework throughout my study. Folkert Haanstra
introduced authentic art education in 2001, based on theories of authentic
learning in educational psychology and on developments in the field of art
education. I will briefly explain how developments in these fields contributed
to the emergence of authentic art education, and I will address two
specific problems related to the development and implementation of
authentic art education that will be explored in this study.
Authentic learning can be described as a social-constructivist
learning approach, in which two perspectives from learning psychology are
united: constructivism and situated learning. Constructivism assumes an
intrinsic motivation of the student, who acquires knowledge by relating
new information to prevailing cognitive configurations. The creation of
knowledge is seen as a continuous process that involves actively researching
and experiencing reality (Roelofs & Terwel, 1999). Situated learning suggests
that learning is a social activity determined by the context in which learning
takes place and the way in which groups of people share knowledge. Instead
of acquiring abstract or context-free academic knowledge, students should
develop knowledge that is linked to concrete applications, contexts and
cultures (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Roelofs and Houtveen defined authentic
learning as:
A process of learning in which the learner acquires meaningful
insights for him/herself, primarily departing from intrinsic motivation
and building on existing knowledge. Authentic learning takes
place in relevant, practical and real-life contexts in which he or
she plays an active, constructive and reflective role that includes
communication and interaction with others. (1999, p. 240)
Authentic learning results in personal constructions of knowledge by
students, but the constructions and the processes that constitute them are
always grounded in realistic socio-cultural activities (Franssen, Roelofs, &
Terwel, 1995). Hence, the word ‘authentic’ in the phrase authentic art education
does not refer to authentic forms of art but to authentic or realistic
forms of learning. The romantic and traditional connotations associated
with ‘authentic art’ are quite far removed from the real life, meaningful
learning contexts that authentic art education strives for.
Authentic art education is also influenced by developments in the
field of art education. It can be regarded as a critical response to a traditional
Context, Aim and Research Design
15

Remixing the Art Curriculum
approach in art education that is called the ‘school art style’. This phrase was
coined by Efland (1976) and refers to a style of student art that is dominant in
many primary schools and that is disconnected from developments in the
professional arts and the student’s self-initiated art. School art has an expressive
form and texture, is made with accessible, easily cleaned media and relatively
free of cognitive strain (Efland, 1976). School art looks spontaneous and
creative, but is in fact highly controlled, conservative and institutionalized
because “it must fit the formula that it not look like it was produced through
formula” (Anderson & Milbrandt, 1998). The teacher defines how the student’s
art should look, excluding the influences of conceptual art and popular
culture while rejecting all forms of copying and appropriation.
To offer students a joyful break from more theoretical school subjects
and to provide schools a ‘humanistic’ appearance are the most important
functions of school art (Haanstra, 2001). Anderson and Milbrandt (1998)
have argued that school art, in the curriculum’s periphery and detached
from society, reflects the modern art era when art was perceived as a pleasurable
aesthetic response to counterbalance the ‘important things in life’.
Although I believe that modernist art is more than just aesthetic, I do agree
that school art pedagogy neglects the development of conceptual and cognitive
skills and that its traditional materials and expressive form bear a stylistic
resemblance to modernist art. Modernist formalistic aesthetics, which
are presented as universal and timeless, assume that modernistic art
pedagogy is applicable in any context by ignoring art’s social and cultural
dimensions (Freedman, 2003).
Haanstra (2001) has identified the school art style as an international
phenomenon that remains highly influential in the 21st century art
curriculum, especially in primary education. Many people still see the art
subjects in school as a place where students have the opportunity to take a
temporary break from thinking (Lindström, 2009), maintaining its reputation
as a pleasurable activity where students work with their hands rather
than with their brain. Aspects of school art are also visible in secondary
schools, although less prominent through the higher status of art subjects
in the curriculum and the presence of specialized art teachers. Yet, Atkinson
(2006) has stated that the pedagogical proceedings of such trained art
teachers are often deeply rooted in modernist ideas like an emphasis on formalistic
visual research as a method to amplify the student’s capacity for
‘self-expression’ and ‘originality’. In such curricula, traditional media and
modernist art examples are dominant, and formal aesthetics and technical
skills are emphasized as more important than the construction of meaning
and creative research. Olivia Gude argues in that respect: “Modernist elements
and principles, a menu of media, or lists of domains, modes, and
rationales are neither sufficient nor necessary to inspire a quality art curriculum
through which students come to see the arts as a significant
contribution to their lives” (Gude, 2007, p. 6). Recent studies have shown
that the contemporary art curriculum in many secondary schools is still
based on such modernist principles and lacks connections with the visual
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Identification phase
culture and contemporary art that define the time in which teenagers grow
up (Buschkühle, 2007; Downing, 2005; Duncum, 2007; Haanstra, 2010;
Haanstra, Van Strien, & Wagenaar, 2008; Harland, 2008). The influence of
modernist and ‘school art’ ideas on the contemporary art curriculum in
schools therefore remains a reality for many students in schools today.
In 2001, Haanstra (2001) introduced authentic art education by
applying the four main design principles that were developed by Roelofs
and Houtveen (1999) to the field of art education.
a. Learning is aimed towards the culture of the student. It takes account of
students’ prior knowledge, providing space for students’ opinions, interests
and requirements.
b. Learning is relevant to situations outside the school: learning tasks are
derived from activities performed by art professionals in society. A learning
task is considered authentic when its origin and solution are accepted
in the professional domain in which art practitioners and experts are
active.
c. Learning takes place in productive learning environments that are
shaped by complex and complete task situations which give scope for
students’ initiative and exploration via divergent assignments, global
guidelines and global criteria. A productive learning environment is
also aimed at the students’ metacognitive processes such as articulation,
reflection and taking responsibility.
d. Communication and cooperation play an important role in the learning
process. Group tasks, student consultation, discussion presentations
and (peer) evaluations are regular features of the learning process.
These criteria are described as educational design principles of authentic art
education in table 1.
a. Learning is aimed towards the culture of the student
– Learning takes account of students’ prior knowledge;
– Space is provided for students’ own contributions, interests and requirements.
b. Learning is relevant to situations outside the school
– Learning tasks are derived from activities performed by art professionals.
c. Knowledge is constructed in complete & complex task situations
– The assignments give scope for students’ initiative
– The learning task is not divided into small sub-tasks.
d. Communication and cooperation play an important role in the
learning process
– A significant part of the education is carried out in the form of group tasks;
– Student consultation, presentations and (peer) evaluations are regular features of
the education.
Table 1: Design principles of authentic art education (Haanstra, 2001; Roelofs & Houtveen, 1999)
Context, Aim and Research Design
17

Remixing the Art Curriculum
Haanstra emphasized that he regarded the principles for authentic art education
as a critical call for further theoretical and empirical research, rather
than as a ready-made model for teachers (Haanstra, 2001). Studies among
art students and their teachers in various contexts were needed to operationalize
authentic art education as a more pragmatic pedagogical tool. Since
then, aspects of authentic art education were used in the curricula of a few
Dutch schools and have been studied in several small-scale studies in the
Netherlands (Bremmer & Huisingh, 2009; Broekhuizen & Schönau, 2014;
Groenendijk et al., 2012; Groenendijk, Huizenga, & Toorenaar, 2010;
Haanstra, 2008; Haanstra et al., 2008; Heijnen, 2007; Hoekstra, 2009;
Kampman, 2010).
In the United States, Anderson and Milbrandt (2005) developed
practical guidelines for what they call ‘authentic instruction in art’, which
shows many similarities with Haanstra’s principles for authentic art education
in relation to real world learning and the social construction of knowledge.
Haanstra’s concept, which is based in learning psychology, is mainly
aimed at pedagogical aspects, whereas Anderson and Milbrandt have developed
additional guidelines for the subject matter of authentic art education.
Anderson and Milbrandt propose that authentic instruction in art has
to be primarily based on thematic inquiry, rather than on ‘modernistic’
esthetical principles, studio techniques or media: “If a historic function of
art has been to tell our human stories, to help us know who we are and how
and what we believe through aesthetic form then the organizing principles
for authentic instruction in art are not form-centered but life-centered”
(Anderson & Milbrandt, 1998, p. 17). Their teacher’s handbook Art for life recommends
the organization of an authentic art curriculum around three
central themes: a sense of self; a sense of place; and a sense of community.
Anderson and Milbrandt acknowledge the intrinsic, aesthetic value of art,
but its extrinsic value as a means that helps students to understand their
place in the world, is emphasized as the primary purpose of art education
(Anderson, 2003).
As shown above, elements of authentic learning in art education
have been applied and discussed in distinctive theoretical and empirical
contexts without the aim of updating or revising Haanstra’s basic principles
of authentic art education from 2001, neither were they converted into a
more practical tool for art educators. The present study addresses both of
these problems: I will revise the original design principles of authentic art
education in the light of contemporary informal and professional visual
production. Based on these investigations, I will develop, test and evaluate a
practical model that aids the design and implementation of authentic pedagogy
in art education. The development of such a tool can help to narrow
the gap between the lively academic discourse around authentic learning
and its implementation in educational practice. It enables art educators to
operationalize the design principles of authentic art education in their local
practices, which offers new possibilities for empirical research on the effects
of authentic learning in art education.
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Identification phase
Aim and research questions
The aim of this dissertation is threefold. First, I aim to explore the original
design principles of authentic art education among contemporary visual producers,
both in the informal and in the professional domain. Authentic art education
aspires to create practice-based and lifelike learning environments by
breaking the boundaries between learning in school and in the world outside
school (Roelofs & Houtveen, 1999). The connection with the world outside
school is established in two different ways: through the interests, needs
and skills of the student and through the themes and practices that are common
in the professional art world. The sub-studies on the current practices
of informal and professional visual producers that I propose here are a contemporary
examination of the two main ‘worlds’ that inform authentic art
education: the characteristics of informal visual networks reflect the present-day
informal creative visual world of the student outside the school.
These characteristics provide an insight into what and how students spontaneously
learn in the context of visual production, without a formal curriculum
or professional guidance. Furthermore, the characteristics of socially
engaged artists that I will explore are representative of how contemporary
artists and designers operate and learn as professional art producers. The
informal and professional communities that are investigated in my research
project do not represent the average informal visual producer or artist but a
population of frontrunners. Not all students are active in visual networks
and not every artist produces socially engaged art, but I interpret these communities
as a vanguard in which the characteristics and trends of presentday
informal and professional visual production are significantly reflected.
These communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) reside in those areas of
the visual and art worlds where contemporary themes advance, which are
relevant for innovative art educators.
The second aim of my study is to update the original design principles
of authentic art education and develop an educational model that supports the
implementation of authentic art education in practice. As authentic art education
is aimed at present forms of artistic production outside the school
grounds, it is important that its basic principles stay in sync with current
societal developments. The essential point of authentic art education is that
it establishes meaningful connections between two varied, contemporary
fields: the informal and the professional domain. The characteristics of
informal and professional art production that I will define enable me to
update and revise the existing design principles for authentic art education
and inform a new model for educational design. The revised design principles
and the new model for authentic art education address practice-based
issues that are relevant in the context of contemporary art education. I will
introduce those issues below.
Today’s developments in art, media and society demand art teachers
with more autonomy as educational designers, to create a flexible,
experimental and engaged art curriculum (Gude, 2004, 2007; Steers, 2007;
Swift & Steers, 1999). This adheres to Helguera (2011) and Lucero (2013), who
Context, Aim and Research Design
19

Remixing the Art Curriculum
acknowledge educational design and teaching in the arts as inherent creative
practices. A curriculum for authentic art education is based on the
belief that the arts domains cannot be understood as a well-defined and
structured body of knowledge, and that the choice for subject matter will
always have an arbitrary character, unlike for example mathematics
(Haanstra, 2011). A model can offer support for creative educational design at
both the macro level (the art curriculum) and the micro level (a single project
or a course). The implementation of educational innovations requires
support at the management level and cooperation between subjects and
teachers (Roelofs & Terwel, 1999). An educational model provides a framework
that facilitates the creative and collaborative interaction between different
stakeholders in an educational organization.
Another issue concerns the ever-increasing availability of - and the
student’s participation in - constantly varying forms of visual culture, which
have made it impossible for teachers to be the sole selectors of relevant subject
matter for art education (Groenendijk et al., 2012; Haanstra, 2010; Wilson,
2003). A model for authentic art education can provide support for the creation
of meaningful connections between the expertise of the teacher and the
interests of the student. It assists educators in designing an art curriculum in
which the teachers and students are co-selectors of relevant subject matter,
based on emerging global and local art-based themes and issues.
A model can also provide support for authentic pedagogy in various
contexts both inside and outside the school. A curriculum based on
authentic learning principles may be aimed at students in schools, but does
not have to be located in a school. Moreover, a school building is not considered
to be an authentic learning environment in itself because it will always
represent the world of the school. Authentic art education is aimed at establishing
realistic learning environments and a powerful way of achieving
that is to teach students in authentic settings like museums and art studios,
rather than teach about them. A model can challenge educators to deploy
an authentic pedagogy that supports the transformation of real-world art
practices into temporary schools, and that invites real-world art practice
into the classroom.
The third aim of my study is to empirically investigate the redefined
design principles for authentic art education in educational practice. To that
end, I asked art teachers working in various contexts to design an intervention
in the form of a series of thematic lessons that they then implemented
and executed in their own art education practice. The educational design,
their subject matter and pedagogy are based on the educational model for
authentic art education that I developed in the course of my research project.
The experiences of teachers with the model, and the experiences and
perceived learning results among students are the main empirical results of
this PhD. They inform both the impact of the pedagogy at a local level and
the generalization to broader contexts in which design principles of authentic
art education may be applied. This study therefore involves more than
testing an existing educational design in practice, because the pedagogical
20
Chapter 1

Identification phase
design is both instrument and object of the study: empirical results offer
both possibilities for the validation and exploration of theoretical design
principles in theory, and they are seen as indicators that help to improve
the pedagogical model in a practical sense.
Main research question
Authentic art education is largely based on the premise that art education
becomes actual and meaningful when teachers establish an exchange
between the student’s everyday art practice and the professional art discipline.
To find new reference points for the content and didactics of authentic
art education, my study aims to explore the two main fields outside
schools that inform authentic art education: the ‘student’s everyday art
practice’ is operationalized as the field of informal visual production and
the ‘professional art discipline’ is operationalized as the field of contemporary
art production. I will study the practices of contemporary informal
and professional visual producers and jointly analyze the characteristics
revealed. This analysis should enable me to update the original design principles
of authentic art education and to propose a model that guides the
design of art courses based on authentic learning. In the next stage, the
model and its underlying design principles will be tested and evaluated in
practice by different art teachers who are asked to design, implement and
evaluate a course on the basis of the new model. The empirical results of the
design and intervention process will be analyzed and discussed and generalized
to broader theoretical and practical contexts. To realize the objectives
described above, the following question will be addressed:
What are the main design principles of a model for authentic art
education that can be derived from the practices of contemporary
informal and professional visual producers, and what are its implications
in educational practices and for curriculum theory?
1
2
3
4
5
Subsidiary questions:
How does artistic development and learning take place among
young people in informal visual networks, and what are their
sources of inspiration?
How does artistic development and learning take place among
contemporary artists, and what are their sources of inspiration?
How can the characteristics of contemporary informal and professional
communities of practice inform a pedagogical model for
contemporary authentic art education?
How do art teachers translate the revised design principles of
authentic art education into lessons, and how do they perceive this
design process?
What is the impact of the teacher-designed lessons in school
practice, and what learning effects do teachers and their
students perceive?
Context, Aim and Research Design
21

Remixing the Art Curriculum
Methodology
The different research methods that I will apply in my thesis are organized
as a design-based research project. First I will explain the backgrounds of
design-based research. In the subsequent sections I will operationalize the
design-based approach in the context of this dissertation. The last sections
discuss how the study is organized and the measures that are taken to
address its methodological challenges.
Backgrounds of design-based research
Brown (1992) and Collins (1992) are generally seen as predecessors of designbased
research in the learning sciences, with an approach that Collins
phrased ‘design experiments’. Design experiments were used to test and
improve educational prototypes that were based on principles and ideas
derived from previous research. Brown (1992) proposed design experiments
as an alternative method for the studies of learning that take place in easily
controlled, but artificially designed laboratory settings. By moving educational
research from the laboratory to the classroom, Brown stressed the
importance of research in naturalistic contexts in order to foster important
theoretical insights about learning that studies with fully controlled variables
cannot provide. This approach to educational research aligns with
the rise of the situated perspective on teaching and learning in educational
psychology (Greeno, Collins, & Resnick, 1996).
More recently, the term design-based research has been applied
to the kind of research that involves design experiments in naturalistic
learning contexts. Collins, Joseph and Bielaczyc (2004) have argued that
design-based research can contribute to answering questions about learning
in context; to developing approaches to study learning beyond the
laboratory; to studying learning as a holistic enterprise; and to using
formative evaluation as a means to derive research findings. Nieveen (2007)
defines design-based research as “The systematic study of analyzing, designing
and evaluating educational interventions in order to solve complex educational
problems for which no ready-made solutions are available and to
gain insight in key design principles” (2009, p. 89). Examples of the kind of
interventions that are referred to could be learning or teaching activities,
assessments, and organizational or technical interventions. The Design
Based Research Collective has added to this definition that design-based
research wants to achieve more than just designing and testing interventions:
“Interventions embody specific theoretical claims about teaching
and learning, and reflect a commitment to understanding the relationships
among theory, designed artifacts, and practice. At the same time, research
on specific interventions can contribute to theories of learning and teaching”
(The Design-Based Research Collective, 2003, p. 6). Barab and Squire
used a table to explain the basic differences between the methodology of
psychological experimentation and design-based research (table 2).
Design-based research is both utility and theory-oriented, and is
operated through cycles of analysis, (re)design, implementation
22
Chapter 1

Identification phase
and evaluation, which involve the collaboration of practitioners at various
stages. It often uses mixed methods, which may include case studies, surveys,
experiments, evaluation-and action research (Plomp, 2009). Designbased
research is thus better understood as a set of various methodologies
than as a single method. Action research has many resemblances with
design-based research, but the main difference is that in action research
the lecturer is both teacher and researcher, whereas in design-based studies
the researcher and teacher have separate, but collaborative roles.
The typology of design-based research as aimed at both procedural
and declarative knowledge can be explained by using Stokes’ quadrant
model (figure 1). Stokes (1997) exemplifies the practice of chemist and microbiologist
Louis Pasteur as an alternative between pure basic research as
represented by theoretical physicist Niels Bohr and the pure applied
Category
Location of
research
Complexity of
variables
Focus of
research
Unfolding of
procedures
Amount of social
interaction
Characterizing
the findings
Role of
participants
Psychological
Experimentation
Conducted in laboratory
settings
Frequently involves a
single or a couple of
dependent variables
Focuses on identifying a
few variables and holding
them constant
Uses fixed procedures
Isolates learners to control
interaction
Focuses on testing
hypothesis
Treats participants as
subjects
Design-based research
Occurs in the buzzing, blooming
confusion of real-life settings where
most learning actually occurs
Involves multiple dependent variables,
including climate variables
(e.g., collaboration among learners,
available resources), outcome variables
(e.g., learning of content, transfer), and
system variables (e.g., dissemination,
sustainability)
Focuses on characterizing the situation
in all its complexity, much of which is
not now a priori
Involves flexible design revision in which
there is a tentative initial set that are
revised depending on their success in
practice
Frequently involves complex social
interactions with participants sharing
ideas, distracting each other, and so on
Involves looking at multiple aspects of
the design and developing a profile that
characterizes the design in practice
Involves different participants in the
design so as to bring their differing
expertise into producing and analyzing
the design
Table 2: Comparing psychological experimentation and design-based research methods (Barab & Squire, 2004, p. 4)
Context, Aim and Research Design
23

Remixing the Art Curriculum
research as personified by inventor Thomas Edison. Pasteur was driven to
establish general scientific understandings of the bacteriological processes
he studied and their direct applications for humans. Design-based research
is often positioned in the ‘Pasteur quadrant’ (Barab, 2006; Van Aken, 2011),
combining an aim for fundamental understandings through description
and analysis with considerations of use through the development and testing
of solutions for field problems. My thesis explores visual practices and
tests local interventions in order to make art education in schools more ‘lifelike’
and less ‘school-like’, whereby theory is both applied and constructed.
Ontology and epistemology
As in other design-based studies, my research project focuses on interventions
in specific learning contexts using a holistic approach that considers
those contexts as integral and meaningful phenomena (Van den Akker,
Gravemeijer, McKenney, & Nieveen, 2006). This approach means that the
study does not allow statistical, context-free generalization but is geared to
analytical reasoning (Yin, 2009): context-specific results can be generalized
for larger populations as design-principles that are replicated in a number
of similar contexts. However, in a philosophical sense, my PhD is best underpinned
as operating from a pragmatic paradigm (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012;
Barab & Squire, 2004; Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003).
Pragmatism’s ontology resides in the reality of real-life social interaction
that takes place in situated contexts and its epistemology is aimed at knowing
how to successfully operate in those contexts. The pragmatic paradigm
can also be explained as an intermediate philosophical stance that allows
both positivist (quantitative) and interpretive (qualitative) methodologies
(Ritchie & Lewis, 2003). Philosopher and psychologist John Dewey, acknowledged
as one of the founders of the pragmatic approach, has argued that
knowledge is both constructed and based in reality, because knowledge
reveals itself primarily in human action and subsequently in symbolic
forms (Biesta & Burbules, 2003). Barab and Squire (2004) place design-based
research in that tradition because knowledge is seen as an interactive
Considerations of use?
No
Yes
Quest for
fundamental
understanding?
Yes
No
Pure basic
research
(Bohr)
Use-inspired
basic research
(Pasteur)
Pure applied
research
(Edison)
Figure 1: Quadrant model of scientific research (Stokes, 1997, p. 73)
24
Chapter 1

Identification phase
process between researchers and practitioners, and is only understood as
successful when it both advances theory and demonstrates its value in local
contexts, or as Cobb et al. (2003, p. 10) put it: “the theory must do real work”.
The pragmatist paradigm from which Remixing the Art Curriculum
operates is also related to the theories of learning it discusses. Authentic art
education is conceptually rooted in constructivist ideas about knowledge
and learning. The central assumption of constructivism is that all our
knowledge is constructed though social interaction and personal experience
(Apelgren, 2010). Personal meanings and lived experiences of individuals
are acknowledged as actors that actively construct contexts (Oulasvirta,
Tamminen, & Höök, 2005). Knowledge is not value-free but related to these
specific cultural and social contexts. This view entails that learning is not
seen as a procedure of ‘drinking in’ new information, but as a dialogical process
that requires active participation and reflection. However, constructivist
discourse is broad, mainly descriptive and not exclusively aimed at the
educational field (Davis & Sumara, 2002). It has been widely recognized as
a powerful discourse on knowledge construction and learning, but it is less
involved with pragmatic issues related to public schooling and teaching.
I agree with Gordon (2009) that, to bridge the gaps between constructivist
theory and constructivist pedagogy, we need a pragmatic discourse of constructivism
in education. Learning theory cannot just be ‘transplanted’ into
educational practice but requires reciprocal interaction between practitioners
and theorists: “Specifically, pragmatic constructivism asserts that constructivist
theory has a great deal to learn from the insights and experiences
of good constructivist teachers” (Gordon, 2009, p. 55). In my thesis, theory
informs practice and practice informs theory, or as the pragmatic scholar
John Dewey puts it: “logical forms accrue to subject matter when the latter
is subjected to controlled inquiry” (1938, p. 162)
Is my problem wicked enough?
As my PhD research is aimed at the implementation of authentic art education
in the practices of art teachers, it is important to see to what extent the
characteristics of design-based education fit this context. Kelly (2009) has
argued that design based research is appropriate for open or wicked problems.
He characterizes these wicked problems in the context of educational
settings as follows: when the content knowledge to be learned is new or
being discovered even by the experts; when how to teach the content is
unclear; when the instructional materials are poor or not available; when
the teachers’ knowledge and skills are unsatisfactory; when the educational
researchers’ knowledge of the content and instructional strategies or
instructional materials are poor; when complex societal, policy or political
factors may negatively affect progress (Kelly, 2009, p. 76).
Four out of six of Kelly’s characteristics apply most to the context at
which authentic art education is aimed:
Content knowledge: authentic art education is aimed at establishing
meaningful connections between the contemporary world of the students
Context, Aim and Research Design
25

Remixing the Art Curriculum
and the professional art world. The content knowledge to be learned is not
canonized in any form. Artistic developments amongst youngsters and in
the professional art world appear on a very broad scale and change at high
speed, especially regarding technological developments in the digital realm.
Pedagogical knowledge: the constant change in content knowledge
that is typical of art curriculums encompasses a change in the teaching
methods of art teachers. Art teachers are searching for methods that can be
related to the ideas and production styles in visual culture and contemporary
art. These methods should also reflect the contemporary pedagogical
insights that are adopted by the teacher’s local educational institutions.
Instructional materials: art teachers who want to teach about current
developments in visual culture and art are confronted by the fact that
there are relatively few teaching materials and textbooks available that deal
with contemporary art. There is a lot of potential teaching material available,
but teachers have to collect and assemble this into usable instructional
materials themselves. Such strategies and tools for educational design
aimed specifically at art curricula are also quite scarce.
Societal, policy or political factors: Economically justified or not, the
support for innovative and experimental art curricula in schools is traditionally
quite small. Art courses may be squeezed into a conventional school
timetable with lessons of 60 minutes or less; time and budget to teach students
in art institutes outside school can be limited; and art teachers may
be urged to produce learning outcomes that are highly controllable and
accountable. However, as many schools do not consider their art curriculum
to be particularly important, this could actually provide art teachers with a
lot of individual freedom regarding what and how they teach. Art teachers
may not always be stimulated to innovate, but their practice does offer
opportunities for bottom-up innovation.
As the ‘wickedness’ of these problems and challenges seems
unmistakable, I can argue that a design-based research methodology is
appropriate for the context at which my study is aimed. Art educators have
a certain autonomy, which allows them to implement characteristics of
authentic art education in their curriculum. The model for authentic art
education that my research produces can provide guidance for the innovation
of their practice with regard to problems related to subject matter,
pedagogy and instruction materials.
Research design
Having established that the educational context of my dissertation is appropriate
for design-based research, I will discuss how the research design is
organized. Six prominent characteristics of design-based research
(Shavelson, Phillips, Towne, & Feuer, 2003; Van Meurs, 2008) are used to
underpin the research design of my current study.
Design-based research is theory-driven. The educational principles
of authentic art education are conceptually rooted in social-constructivist
theories and research in the field of art education. My studies among
26
Chapter 1

Identification phase
contemporary informal and professional visual producers and the
implementation of the revised principles of authentic art education in
educational practice contribute to our knowledge about how forms of
social-constructivist learning can be applied and advances the theoretical
discourse on authentic learning.
Design-based research is utility-oriented. The revised model for
authentic art education I will develop is measured in terms of its value for
teachers and students in local educational contexts. Part of the research
process is aimed at finding out how teachers used the educational model
and if it has contributed to the quality of designing, teaching and
learning processes.
Design-based research is interventionist. The educational model will
be used and tested by professional teachers in their schools and classes. The
variety and unpredictability of the real-world contexts in which the intervention
takes place are seen as essential conditions to explain educational
processes and inform the design process.
Design-based research is collaborative. The development of the educational
model involves the participation and contribution of different practitioners
in the field of art education, at various research stages. This group
includes informal and professional visual producers, field experts and art
teachers. The role of the teachers as co-designers of the intervention is typical
for design-based research, but is deployed in a somewhat different form
here. Teachers do not co-design the educational model themselves but have
to operationalize it further into lesson plans that are executed in their practices.
This method is necessary for me in order to evaluate the practicality of
the model as both an educational design tool and a pedagogical guide in
class. The way teachers operate as co-designers in my study has many similarities
to the methodology applied by Adams et al. (2008) and Groenendijk
et al. (2012), who provided pedagogical guidelines and a brief training
course that challenged art educators to develop and implement innovative
lessons which were then systematically evaluated.
Design-based research is iterative. Design-based research usually
entails several research cycles that include design, testing, analysis and redesign.
However, Herrington, McKenney, Reeves, and Oliver (2007) have argued
that the execution of successive design cycles should be avoided by doctoral
students who want to complete their studies in 4-5 years. They recommend
that PhD researchers deploy a simplified design-based research format that
fits the context and limited timespan of a dissertation. In my research plan,
the evolving pedagogical model is only tested once in educational practice.
Nevertheless, this test is rather complex and requires art educators to operate
as designers who operationalize the model into courses for their practices.
The teachers’ design process has an iterative character because it
includes the development of prototypes through collaborative research
cycles before a course is finally implemented.
Design-based research is process-oriented. The focus of my thesis is
on understanding and improving educational interventions rather than on
Context, Aim and Research Design
27

Remixing the Art Curriculum
statistically measuring its effects. The qualitative and quantitative research
instruments are used to identify characteristics and to link designing,
teaching and learning processes to outcomes in particular settings, without
aiming for controlled input–output measurement.
As the current study can be described as theory-driven, utilityoriented,
interventionist, collaborative, iterative and process-oriented, it fits
the criteria of design-based research. The research project is divided into
four phases: identification phase, investigation phase, prototyping & assessment
phase and reflection phase. This four-phase structure is inspired by
the models of Wademan (2005), Reeves (2000), and Nieveen (2009) and
displayed in figure 2.
Phases
The identification phase is the initial stage and aims to identify the main
problem of investigation in a theoretical context. In my research project,
the identification phase is aimed at identifying the original characteristics
of authentic art education in relation to related historical and contemporary
discourses. The investigation phase is a preliminary investigation into the
authentic practices of present-day informal and professional visual producers.
The aim of this phase is to characterize contemporary visual practice in
order to update the original characteristics of authentic art education and to
translate them into a model. The results of this phase are a tentative model
for authentic art education, based on redefined tentative design principles.
The prototyping & assessment phase is the third stage, aimed at testing the
model with practitioners in real-world contexts and studying how the
tentative design principles ‘work’. A group of teachers will use the model to
develop a course for their local practice, which will be implemented and
evaluated. The final stage, the reflection phase, aims to discuss the practical
results and the contributions to theory of the design-based study: It presents
a final version of the model for authentic art education and contributions to
theory in the form of revised design principles and theoretical implications.
Identification
phase
Investigation
phase
Prototyping &
Assessment
phase
Reflection
phase
Backgrounds
and
characteristics
of authentic
art education
Investigation of
contemporary
informal and
professional art
practices
Tentative
model for
authentic
art education
Tentative
design
principles
Teachers
design and
implement an
intervention,
based on the
model
Final model
for authentic
art education
Design
principles and
theoretical
implications
Figure 2: Main research phases of Remixing the Art Curriculum
28
Chapter 1

Identification phase
When I combine the research questions, activities, participants, research
instruments and desired outcomes with this four-phased structure, the outline
for my research project is arranged as presented in figure 3.
Figure 3 indicates how the position of the researcher as an educational
designer changes over the course of four research phases. Throughout
the identification and investigation phases, the researcher is the main
designer who develops a model for authentic art education. During the prototyping
& assessment phase, the role of the educational designer transfers
to a group of art teachers who design and implement an intervention on the
basis of the model. The researcher facilitates and analyzes the teachers’ iterative
design cycles and evaluates the implementation process. In the reflection
phase, the researcher adopts the role of educational designer again, as
he redesigns the final model of authentic art education.
Methodological challenges and measures
A design-based research project requires researchers to deal with specific
associated methodological challenges. Dede (2004) has argued that
design-based research has a tendency to be ‘over-methodologized’ and
‘under-conceptualized’: it can create excessive quantities of data, and has to
keep a complicated balance between pragmatic and academic scholarship.
This also relates to difficulties with the generalization among cases in contexts
with many variables and large quantities of data (Collins et al., 2004,
p. 16). Another challenge is that the researcher has a potential conflict of
interest as he operates both as an advocate (designer) and a critic (evaluator)
in a design-based research project (The Design-Based Research Collective,
2003). A dual role of the researcher/designer is complicated but intrinsic to
design-based research and methodological measures can help to reduce bias
and evaluator effects. A third dilemma is that real-world research contexts
bring real-world difficulties, or as Langer put it: “design experiment research
is by nature messy, and will continue to be so” (2012, p. 79). All kinds of practical
and methodological complications can arise in the realistic contexts
that disrupt the execution of the study.
To respond to the methodological challenges related to designbased
research, I will operationalize the design study guidelines as
formulated by McKenney, Nieveen, and Van den Akker (2006) and (Plomp,
2009). These guidelines do not solve all methodological problems related to
design-based research, but they can help to add substantial academic rigor
to this dissertation. Below, I will discuss the methodology of my PhD
research with regard to these guidelines.
Have an explicit conceptual framework. The external validity of a
design-based study is enlarged when it is rooted in an underlying rationale.
The rationale of my thesis builds on the conceptual framework of authentic
art education (Haanstra, 2001), which is further explored through literature
reviews of concepts relating to contemporary learning and curriculum
design, popular visual culture and the arts. This provides me with a solid
foundation to underpin design decisions and to analyze and discuss
Context, Aim and Research Design
29

Remixing the Art Curriculum
Identification
phase
Backgrounds of
authentic art
education
Investigation phase
Investigation of
contemporary informal
and professional art
practices
Prototyping &
Assessment phase
Teachers design and
implement an
intervention, based
on the model
Reflection phase
Final model of
authentic art
education, design
principles and
theoretical
implications
Research
Questions
– How does artistic
development and
learning take place
among informal visual
producers, and what
are their sources of
inspiration?
– How does artistic
development and
learning take place
among professional
artists and what are
their sources of
inspiration?
– How can the
characteristics of
contemporary visual
producers inform a
pedagogical model for
contemporary authentic
art education?
– How do art
teachers translate
the revised design
principles of
authentic art
education into
lessons and how
do they perceive
this deswgn
process?
– What is the impact
of the teacherdesigned
lessons in
school practice and
what learning
effects do teachers
and their students
perceive?
Main research
question:
What are the main
design principles of
a model for authentic
art education that
can be derived from
the practices of
contemporary
informal and
professional visual
producers, and what
are its implications in
educational
practices and for
curriculum theory?
Activities
– Analysis of
the problem
in historical
context
– Formulation
of research
questions and
methodology
– Analysis of relevant
present-day contexts
for authentic art
education
– Design of an
educational model
– Teachers design
and implement an
intervention, based
on the model
– Evaluation of
design and
implentation
process
– Design of a final
educational model
– Formulation of
theoretical
implications
Educational
designer
Researcher Researcher Teachers Researcher
Participants
– Informal visual
producers
– Socially engaged artists
– Fieldexperts
– Teachers (20)
– Students (302)
Research
Instruments
– Literature
review
– Literature review
– Focus group
interviews
– Topic interviews
– Observations
– Expert panel
– Topic interviews
– Learner reports
– literature review
– Literature review
Outcomes
– Theoretical
framework
– Original
design
principles of
authentic art
education
– Characteristics of
informal and professional
visual producers
– Tentative design
principles and model
for authentic art
education
– Analysis of design
process
– Analysis of the
implementation
process
– Final model of
authentic art
education
– Contributions to
theory, practice,
and methodology
Figure 3: Research design overview of Remixing the Art Curriculum
30
Chapter 1

Identification phase
research outcomes. The practical and theoretical implications of my study
will be aligned with existing theories in the context of authentic learning.
Develop congruent study design. A congruent design-based study
entails that the chain of reasoning is both transparent and tight (McKenney
et al., 2006). Remixing the Art Curriculum has a coherent four-phased structure
based on theory and models developed by scholars in the field of
design-based research. The investigations during each of these phases are
interrelated, but they are treated as individual studies. Each of the different
sub-studies includes a theoretical section and research questions, methodology,
data analysis and conclusions.
Use triangulation. Triangulation is an effective strategy in the context
of research-based design, because it can enhance the reliability and internal
validity of research findings by comparing data that were retrieved via
different research instruments. In my study, data triangulation is mainly
used during the Prototyping & Assessment phase. The implementation process
of teacher-designed courses will be evaluated among both teachers and
students, applying qualitative (interviews with teachers) and quantitative
research instruments (learner reports by students).
Use respondent validation. Another measure to increase internal
validity is to use respondent validation or member check. All the artists and
teachers in my research project are invited to review the chapters in which
their actions and statements are described. The participants’ feedback is
used to correct errors and misinterpretations.
Apply both inductive and deductive data analysis. This guideline is
closely related to the use of a conceptual framework in design-based
research. The framework of authentic art education allows me to apply
both deductive and inductive forms of analysis during my research project:
it enables me to explore emerging patterns in data retrieved from
contemporary visual producers, which inform existing design principles.
The updated design principles are then tested in educational practice,
which provides me with possibilities for both verification and exploration.
Use context-rich descriptions of contexts, design decisions and results.
As design-based research takes place in naturalistic settings, the generalizability
of results to other contexts is limited. ‘Thick description’ (Geertz, 1973;
Lincoln & Guba, 1985), a detailed account of the studied phenomenon and
research findings, supports external validity of the study because it enables
researchers and practitioners to translate findings to contexts in which they
might be applicable. My thesis uses context-rich descriptions of artistic and
educational practices, direct quotes from the interview data, and many visual
examples, which help the reader to envision what is being described.
Organization of the dissertation
The structure of my thesis follows the four phases of the design process,
which runs roughly over a period of four years.
The current chapter is the identification phase and describes the
theoretical framework, research questions and methodology of the study.
Context, Aim and Research Design
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
In the following chapters I will explain and describe the activities,
research instruments and participants in the other three research phases
in further detail.
The investigation phase (chapters 2-6) examines the practices of
contemporary informal and professional visual producers, both theoretically
and empirically. These practices are selected as relevant contexts to
inform a new model for authentic art education. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on
how art production and learning takes place in informal visual networks;
spontaneous visual production groups and networks that have evolved
outside formal learning institutions or art organizations. Chapters 4 and 5
investigate the practices of contemporary artists and collectives. These
studies explore how artistic development and learning evolve in today’s
art practice. In chapter 6, the characteristics of informal and professional
visual production that I defined throughout chapters 2-5 are compared and
synthesized with the existing principles of authentic art education. This
is the chapter in which the researcher operates most prominently as an
educational designer by discussing and formulating new design principles
and proposing a new model for authentic art education.
The prototyping & assessment phase (chapters 7-9), describes how
the new model is applied and tested in educational practice. A group of art
teachers uses the new model for authentic art education to design an intervention
in the form of an art course that they implement in their local art
curriculum. These chapters describe the teachers’ iterative design process,
the designed courses, the implementation process and the results as perceived
by teachers and their students.
The final section of my thesis is the reflection phase (chapter 10).
This chapter analyzes and discusses how the new design principles of
authentic art education functioned in realistic educational contexts. These
reflections assist the revision of my model for authentic art education and
inform the local and theoretical implications of Remixing the Art Curriculum.
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Identification phase
Context, Aim and Research Design
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INVEST
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
IDENTIF
PROTOTYP
ASS
REF
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How Contemporary Visual Practises Inspire Authentic Art Education
ICATION
IGATION
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phase
ESSMENT
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Part one:
Informal
UMMARY
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Producers
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36

Investigation phase
Introduction to chapters 2 and 3
Chapters 2 and 3 discuss my investigation of contemporary creative
production in the informal domain. They examine the self-initiated visual
practices of young people through literature reviews and empirical
research. Both chapters were written as independent papers for research
journals and books, which accounts for a certain overlap in explaining
theoretical terms and concepts. Together, chapter 2 and 3 answer the
research question: how does artistic development and learning take place
among young people in informal visual networks, and what are their sources
of inspiration? The answers to this research question will be discussed in
a brief postscript that concludes chapter 3.
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
2
Informal
Visual
Networks1
1 This is a slightly adapted version of a paper that was published
in three different languages as:
– Heijnen, E. (2011). Informele visuele netwerken. Cultuur + Educatie,
11(30), 32-53.
– Heijnen, E. (2013). Informelle visuelle Netzwerke.
In K. Bering, S. Hölscher, R. Niehoff & K. Pauls (Eds.),
Visual Learning: Positionen im internationalen Bereich (pp. 401-417).
Oberhausen, Germany: Athena Verlag.
– Heijnen, E. (2014). Informal Visual Networks. In V. Venkatesh,
J. Wallin, J. C. Castro & J. E. Lewis (Eds.), Educational, behavioral,
and psychological considerations in niche online communities (pp. 33-50).
Heshey, PA: IGI Global.
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Investigation phase
Authentic art education advocates the establishment of meaningful,
lifelike learning environments by breaking the boundaries between
formal learning contexts and the world outside school. An authentic
art curriculum is continuously informed by two different domains:
the informal domain where the student’s everyday art interests and
practices reside and the domain of professional art in which artists,
curators and other art experts are active. To find new reference points
for the content and didactics of contemporary authentic art education,
my study aims to research these two main fields. In this chapter
I will explore the characteristics of informal visual production. My
findings offer insights into the varied cultural production of today’s
youth and allow me to define characteristics of informal learning practices
of visual production networks. I found support for the conclusion
that today’s art teacher is part of a world in which visual knowledge
and production can be learned in various communities of practice,
which are empowered by technology and globalized networks. A formal
curriculum that is open to these various communities of practice
might be capable of keeping pace with the rise of participatory cultures
while remaining meaningful to students. A teacher in such a
curriculum is a tour guide at a lively junction where communities of
practice of visual professionals and informal visual networks meet.
For a long time, the field of learning psychology devoted relatively little
attention to informal learning practices outside formal educational institutions.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a well-tried model like
apprenticeship learning was regarded as an outdated concept that had lost
touch with contemporary psychological and social theories. At that time,
apprenticeship learning was often characterized as conservative and authoritarian
and was aimed more at craftsmanship than at the development of
theoretical knowledge (Fuller & Unwin, 1998; Guile & Young, 1998; Lave &
Wenger, 1991; Parker, 2006).
At the end of the twentieth century, informal learning gained
attention in learning theory, as a part of a renewed interest in learning processes
that take place in real-life contexts outside of school. Informal learning
communities have been studied by researchers in the field of learning
psychology to gain more knowledge on the social contexts that determine
learning (Greeno et al., 1996; Hodkinson, Biesta, & James, 2007;
Vadeboncoeur, 2006). Researchers in the field of art and media education
have focused on youth and subcultures within these informal communities
of practice, to discover possible gaps and connections between art and
media lessons in school and the self-initiated work that young people produce
outside of school (Green, 2008; Jenkins et al., 2006; Manifold, 2009;
Wilson, 2003). Researchers in both of these fields acknowledge the value of
spontaneous and informal learning trajectories as sources of inspiration
for art education and other subjects in schools. “Adolescents and young
adults learn more through their social interactions around favorite forms
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
of visual culture than adults may realize” (Freedman, Heijnen, Kallio-Tavin,
Kárpáti, & Papp, 2013, p. 132).
The goal of this chapter is to obtain an understanding of the spontaneous
everyday art practices of young people. To investigate these practices,
I will study the learning practices of youth who operate in visual production
communities that form spontaneously, outside any formal curriculum.
Because these communities are dynamic and volatile, they offer me an opportunity
to ‘take the current temperature’ of the interests, productions and
learning methods of young people engaged in visual production. The main
sources to define the characteristics of informal visual production are studies
by learning psychologists and researchers in media and arts education.
The characteristics of the informal visual communities that are thus defined
will be compared with characteristics of traditional formal art education.
Three perspectives on learning
The recent revaluation of informal learning fits in the broad tradition of
educational psychology, as described by Greeno et al. (1996) based upon variations
in the different perspectives on knowing and learning from which
educators, researchers and psychologists explain and study the course of
human learning. They distinguish between three general perspectives on
knowing and learning: the behaviorist, cognitivist and the situative perspective.
All of these perspectives consist of many different theories that have
developed and intermingled in the history of educational psychology,
although they did not develop equally or simultaneously.
The behaviorist perspective originated around the early twentieth
century and has had a strong influence on the way school systems and classes
have been organized up to the present time. This perspective can be typified
as teacher oriented. It operates from the assumption that humans are
conditioned to respond to stimuli and is less concerned with the motivation
and mental processes of the learner. Instruction (stimulus) and the observable
behavioral changes of the learner (response) are the focal points in the
behaviorist perspective.
The cognitivist perspective, which focuses on the inner mental
activities of the learner, became the dominant paradigm in educational
theory in the 1970s. The cognitivist perspective puts a greater emphasis on
the connections and cognitions formed in the mind of individual learners
and studies forms and models of cognitive information processing. This perspective
can be typified as learner oriented.
The situative perspective originated around the 1990s and is seen
as a socially-oriented perspective on learning (Greeno et al., 1996). It focuses
on the learning contexts in which groups of people interact. Theorists who
operate from a situative perspective emphasize that learning is a social activity
determined by the context in which learning takes place and the way in
which groups of people share knowledge. Knowledge is not neutral but is
situated in specific, real-world contexts in which it is learned and applied
(Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989).
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The emergence of these three perspectives characterizes broad theoretical
and methodical shifts in psychological and educational research: from
teacher-centered to student-centered approaches; from individually-orientated
towards socially-oriented notions; and from laboratory studies
towards the study of real-life learning contexts, inside or outside the classroom
(Hakkarainen, 2010). Research from the situative perspective within
learning psychology offers the best clues for defining characteristics of
informal group learning. Researchers like Brown et al. (1983), Lave and
Wenger (1991), Bereiter and Scardamalia (1997) and Engeström (1999) contributed
important findings based upon the study of learning processes in
work and daily life, and with pedagogical models for cooperative, contextrich
learning. Brown’s distributed expertise communities, Lave and Wenger’s
communities of practice, Bereiter’s knowledge-building communities and
Engeström’s expansive learning communities are all learning concepts that
share the same features: learning is based on complex problems and tasks,
group members produce and share knowledge, and boundaries are broken
between learning in educational contexts and real-life contexts
(Hakkarainen, 2010).
To identify the characteristics of informal group learning practices,
I will explore Lave and Wenger’s theory of communities of practice (CoP) in
more detail. This choice is based on two arguments. First, compared to the
other three community-based learning theories mentioned, CoP is the least
rooted in school practice. Lave and Wenger formed their ideas largely on the
basis of anthropological studies among informal groups and communities
of practitioners. The second reason is that CoP theory is aimed particularly
at analyzing the social processes that determine learning in communities
outside of school. This approach fits my aim because, I am looking for characteristics
that distinguish informal group learning from learning at school.
Communities of practice
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) introduced the phrase ‘communities of
practice’ as part of their theory of situated learning. They emphasize that
learning is always an integral aspect of social practice; there are no activities
that are not situated and “even so-called general knowledge only has power
in specific circumstances” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 33). We are all members of
different formal or informal communities of practice of which learning is a
natural aspect. By studying different communities of practice, Lave and
Wenger want to extend our viewpoints on learning as it takes place in reallife
contexts: outside of school, and both intentional and unintentional.
Participation is seen as the key ingredient that stimulates spontaneous
learning processes. If a community of practice offers legitimate peripheral
participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) to its members, it is also a learning
community - not only for newcomers but also for experienced community
members. Legitimate access to the periphery of the community is conditional
for participation and learning in the community. According to Lave and
Wenger, you need to be a member (legitimacy) with access to the periphery
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
of the community to commence the centripetal process of becoming a full
member. Identity formation is another central concept in CoP theory.
According to Lave and Wenger, practice - and thus learning - cannot be cut
loose from the identity formation that occurs simultaneously. The member
learns as he gains a greater understanding of all aspects of the (improvised)
enterprise in which he is submerged and with which he identifies.
Wenger (2006a) defines CoPs as: “[…] groups of people who share a
concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as
they interact regularly” (p. 1). Not every community is a community of practice;
three characteristics are crucial, according to Wenger:
– The domain: A CoP is defined by a shared domain of interest to
which members are committed. Members therefore share a competence
that distinguishes them from non-members.
– The community: Members build relationships that enable them to
learn from each other. They engage in joint activities and discussions,
share information and help each other.
– The practice: CoP members are not bystanders; they are practitioners.
They develop a shared repertoire of resources such as experiences,
stories, tools and problem-solving strategies.
Accordingly, a general community of practice can be defined as: a community
that is defined in a shared domain of interests and competences from practitioners
who develop a shared repertoire of resources through joint activities, information
sharing and peer learning.
The characteristics of communities of practice described above
have been formulated from a general perspective and apply to the broad
domain of social practices outside of formal education. My next step is to
extend these characteristics with more specific aspects of informal visual
learning by exploring communities of practice that are active in the visual
subdomain. Before doing so, it is important to demarcate more precisely
which groups are concerned in this case. Lave and Wenger do not distinguish
between informal and non-formal groups in their research. Informal
groups originate spontaneously and have no connection with a formal curriculum.
A non-formal learning situation is a hybrid form between informal
and formal learning (Vadeboncoeur, 2006); one that occurs outside formal
educational institutes, but where there usually is a preconceived learning
aim and a formal division between supervisors and participants. Examples
of non-formal learning are apprenticeships, out-of-school courses and
museum education. My investigation is aimed at young people who are
active in the informal domain. They operate in communities that arise spontaneously,
in which learning is not a primary objective, but a ‘side effect’ of
collective visual production around a shared domain of interest. As these
informal groups are often built on hybrid connections - especially in the
digital realm - I will address them as networks from now on.
Several researchers in art and media education have drawn attention
to the visual activities that students deploy outside of the arts classroom,
often in relation to the rise of digital technologies and global
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Investigation phase
networks, which have lowered the barrier for collaborative creative production
and large-scale cultural exchange (Castro, 2012; Kafai & Peppler,
2011). In the following paragraph, I will define the characteristics of informal
visual networks by cross-fertilizing the characteristics of Wenger’s
communities of practice with Jenkins’ participatory cultures (Jenkins,
2006b; Jenkins et al., 2006). Subsequently, the definition will be refined
with characteristics from researchers who have analyzed specific visual
networks at close range.
Participatory culture
Participatory culture is a phrase coined by the American media theorist and
researcher Henry Jenkins, who has done extensive research among communities
formed around popular culture, such as Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, Hong Kong action cinema and Japanese anime (Jenkins, 1990, 2006a,
2006b). According to Jenkins, fan communities can be seen as early adaptors
of present virtual community technology and of participatory culture. Long
before computers became a standard piece of equipment in almost every
western household, fan communities were sharing their knowledge
through fanzines, informal postal networks and at conventions. These fans
do not just exchange information; they produce new stories, artwork and
costumes based upon the admired source. The rise of the Internet and new
digital technology empowered the activities of fan communities. It increased
the speed of communication, offered access to members from all over the
world and also added new objects of fandom from the popular culture of
foreign countries.
Jenkins understands the activities of fan communities as prototypes
of participatory culture; an expansive cultural change that hybridizes
borders between producers, consumers, creators and spectators. He defines
participatory culture as:
a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and
civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s
creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is
known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.
A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their
contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection
with one another. (2006, p. 3).
These participatory cultures arise from three different trends: new tools and
technologies enable consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate and recirculate
new media content; a range of subcultures promote do-it-yourself
media production; economic trends favoring horizontally integrated media
conglomerates encourage the flow of images, ideas and narratives across
multiple media channels (convergence) and demand more active forms of
spectatorship (Jenkins, 2006b, pp. 135-136).
Jenkins argues that these trends form the foundations for participatory
cultures, which reveal new skills for cultural production, often in
close connection with technological developments in the digital realm.
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Play, performance and simulation are valuable skills for problemsolving,
improvisation and interpretation around complex subject matter and realworld
processes. Appropriation (or sampling and remixing) is another
recurrent practice in participatory cultures. To Jenkins, appropriation has
always been an important method among young artists to explore cultural
traditions and conventions: from the apprenticeships of renaissance painters
to improvisation around ‘standards’ in the jazz scene. Jenkins shares this
point of view with other media theorists who claim that copyright is a typical
product of the modern era that emerged in the slipstream of mass media
(Lessig, 2008; Mason, 2008; Shirky, 2010). In their view, the traditional copyright
is in danger of becoming an outdated concept that condemns the
artistic activities of current generations to a status of piracy. Jenkins and
colleagues recall the remixing and collaging activities in communities of fan
artists and techno and hip-hop musicians as examples of participatory cultures,
who are “taking culture apart and putting it back together” (2006,
p. 32). According to Jenkins, schools in particular have falsified the image of
artistic production by underlining the autonomous and individual aspects
of creative production and ignoring appropriation as a foundation on
which cultural history is built.
Schools in general have been slow to respond to the emergence of
participatory culture, argues Jenkins. Other researchers have also argued
that schools have to adapt their curriculum and didactics to students growing
up in contemporary visual and media culture (Buckingham, 2003;
Duncum, 2009a; Freedman, 2003). Nonetheless, there is still often a yawning
gap between the formal arts curriculum and the spontaneous cultural production
that takes place beyond the school (Heijnen, 2009).
An important aspect of informal cultural production that differs
from school culture is the emergence of affinity spaces, according to
Jenkins. The phrase ‘affinity spaces’ was introduced by Gee (2004, 2005) and
can be defined as semiotic social spaces where people come together around
a shared interest or affinity. They are physical or virtual informal learning
cultures that can evolve spontaneously and on an ad hoc basis from people’s
involvement with popular culture. Gee argues that affinity spaces offer powerful
opportunities for learning because they connect people of different
classes, races, ages, genders and levels of education. Members can participate
in various ways depending on their personal interests and skills.
Affinity spaces provide meaningful contexts for learning because they allow
members to feel like and act as experts, sharing their knowledge with other
experts in the domain. To Jenkins, affinity spaces and informal learning within
popular culture seem interchangeable concepts, which can be opposed to
formal educational systems. Jenkins and colleagues (2006) describe affinity
spaces around popular culture as experimental, social, innovative and
dynamic, whereas formal education is conservative, individualistic, bureaucratic
and static.
In the context of art education, Jenkins’ vision attunes with that of
Wilson, who states that art teachers are “typically stuck in the past”
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Investigation phase
(Wilson, 2003, p. 216). Wilson explains that art educators tend to be far
behind in adopting trends from their students and from professional art
and media producers. Where the art world in the classroom is often depicted
as structured, hierarchical and knowable, Wilson describes its structure
as a rhizome: a structure that is non-hierarchical and chaotic, with multilayered
relationships. He sees the Internet as the ultimate rhizome, in
which amateurs and professionals, the young and the experienced, high
art and visual culture, Eastern and Western cultures meet and learn from
each other. Wilson argues that students’ self-initiated work and interests
based upon popular visual culture have the potential to broaden the
school art curriculum in unpredictable ways: “The teacher’s new role
would be that of negotiator among conventional art, emerging art, and
student-initiated content that may include virtually anything from the
entire realm of visual culture” (Wilson, 2003, p. 227). Both Jenkins and
Wilson argue that participatory cultures in which youngsters are involved
are important artistic and educational ‘hotspots’, not only for community
members but also as a source of inspiration for the formal school
curriculum.
As we have seen, a majority of characteristics of participatory cultures
bears a resemblance to communities of practice theory. Wenger and
Jenkins both address aspects regarding a shared domain as a basis to conduct
joint activities, share information and learn from each other. Like
Wenger, Jenkins describes members of participatory cultures as practitioners
who produce a shared repertoire of resources. However, some
characteristics of participatory cultures should be interpreted as specifications
of communities of practice active in the realm of art and media
production. Terms like ‘artistic expression’ and ‘creating’ are typical because
they refer to creative production as a central aspect of participatory cultures.
The fact that these networks are formed by an ad hoc and bottom-up
approach and that they are populated by diverse members in terms of class,
race, age, gender and level of education, should also be mentioned as typical
of participatory cultures. These participants learn by sharing work and ideas
and through forms of informal mentorship. The domain in which participatory
cultures form is also specified by Jenkins: participatory cultures arise in
the context of affinity spaces within popular culture, around which members
feel and act as experts. One last characteristic that distinguishes participation
cultures within the broad concept of communities of practice relates
to the methods of production and learning. Jenkins describes methods that
are specific to informal practices within popular culture, fueled by new technologies.
Play, simulation and performance are seen as recurrent methods
for problem solving, interpretation, improvisation and discovery in participatory
cultures, while sampling and remixing are seen as experimental
forms of expression.
By combining the characteristics of the communities of practice
theory with those of participatory culture, I can further refine the definition
of informal visual networks (table 3).
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Domain: shared concerns, interests and competences
Affinity spaces within popular culture
– Members feel and act as experts
Community: joint activities, information sharing, peer learning
– Groups form on the basis of a bottom-up and ad hoc approach
– Varied population
– Strong support for creating & sharing
– Informal mentorship
Practice: production of a shared repertoire of resources
Experimental production through: play, simulation, performance, sampling and remixing
Table 3: Characteristics of communities of practice combined with participatory cultures
Informal production groups formed around popular culture
The addition of participatory cultures theory has brought us closer to a final
definition of informal visual networks. To elaborate on these characteristics,
I will use literature from other scholars in the field of art and media education
who have studied various groups within participatory cultures. The aim
is to provide more detailed characteristics of informal visual networks by
distinguishing miscellaneous informal practices around popular culture
from formal art education.
Research on creative processes in informal production groups
formed around popular culture seems quite limited compared to formal art
education studies. There are plenty of studies on subcultures and informal
communities in the field of social studies, but they often lack a specific focus
on topics around artistic production and learning. Although the studies discussed
below have been conducted from the perspective of media and art
education, their diversity makes it difficult to compare them with one another.
I will therefore discuss the different studies globally, focusing on the relevant
aspects that can add to the final definition of informal visual networks.
First, I will discuss informal groups who produce work using more
traditional visual materials and techniques like drawing, painting and costume
design. Second, I will discuss informal groups that have formed
around new media like blogs and video games. Third, I will discuss informal
popular music learning practices that have been studied in the field of
music education. Even though the latter groups are not primarily formed
around visual production, they still can provide us with useful information
because their members’ sources of inspiration, production methods and
learning styles resemble the characteristics of informal visual networks.
Each of the three types of groups will be accompanied with an
example of a contemporary ‘networked’ artwork. Although these works
have manifested themselves in the context of professional art, their
materialization and subject matter are inseparable from the activities of
non-professionals in niche interest groups. Thus, the presented artworks
offer an insight in the lived reality of present-day informal visual networks
and the hybridizing relationship between amateur and professional
cultural producers.
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‘Analogue’ groups: fan artists and graffiti writers
One of the most prominent characteristics of informal groups formed
around popular culture is that they often create complex worlds with their
own rules, languages and values that make it hard for art educators to categorize
their activities under general labels like ‘hobby’, ‘amateurism’ or
‘art’. Studies by Manifold (2009), Bowen (1999) and Valle and Weiss (2010)
reveal that apparently routine pastimes can evolve into very specific forms
of knowledge and artistic production, whose personal or artistic value for
members is difficult to determine for non-members. Even though the artistic
tools that these groups use could be typified as ‘analogue’, worldwide
online networks play an important role in these communities as a means to
share information, to publish and to comment on self-made work. Another
feature is that the practices of these producers have a longitudinal character.
Members produce series of works around the same topic of interest,
stretched over several years of their lives.
Manifold (2009) studied nearly 300 fan artists and cosplayers
between the ages of 14 and 24 who publish their self-made work online at
deviantArt.com, Elfwood and Cosplay.com. The study demonstrates that
these fan participants produce and discuss self-made art via worldwide
networks for many different reasons. Often, their art making is originally
motivated by the need to express an involvement with certain forms of popular
culture, but it can also fulfill a need for personal expression, identity
formation or the enactment of ways of being in the world. This leads to a
great variety in the levels of engagement of fan participants. Some remain
at a basic level of art making that is driven by an instinctive desire to draw
pictures, whereas others become highly skilled and creative image makers
whose personal visual styles are recognized by peers in the community.
A notable finding in Manifold’s study is that even fan participants who reach
a high level in art making do not always aspire to careers as professional
artists. Making fan-based or cosplay art is seen as a meaningful activity in
their lives because “mundane experiences were balanced by excursions into
fantasy” (Manifold, 2009, p. 68). Some fan artists indeed move on to the
professional art world, but many participants value fan art as significant -
independent of their professional career. This shows that the urge to produce
self-initiated art must be viewed separately from the aspiration for a
career as a professional artist. The degree of professionalism of the fan artist
does not necessarily determine the quality of the visual work or the value it
represents for its producer.
The specific contexts and visual languages that are central to every
popular culture community contribute to the gap between members and
non-members. For spectators ‘outside’ such communities it is often difficult
to recognize the artistic qualities by which members value the products of
their peers. This becomes clear when focusing on the practices of graffiti
and street artists. Bowen (1999) found that many graffiti artists see other
graffiti artists as their primary audience because they are considered to be
more qualified to judge and comment on the quality of visual work
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displayed in the streets. Many people on the street will not be aware of the
ways in which members of the graffiti scene judge each other's work continuously
(Valle & Weiss, 2010). It is an open, competitive network in which criteria
including authenticity, individual style and skill are discussed through
peer feedback and on graffiti forums. Over time, street art has gained the status
of a socially accepted art form (Mason, 2008; Mathieson & Tàpies, 2009;
Stahl, 2009), but this usually involves the work that is clearly recognizable as
art. A rapidly drawn tag (stylized signature) or throw up (more elaborate tag,
usually multicolored) is considered by many to be just vandalism, whereas
members of the graffiti scene recognize potential artistic value in all forms
of graffiti; from a marker-tag in the subway to a colorful legal mural.
Members are aware that a tag is not just a scribble but a personalized sign
that was developed through perpetual effort and repetition. The ‘concealed’
diversity of graffiti tags is the subject of Graffiti Taxonomy, a work by artist
Evan Roth (figure 4).
‘Digital’ groups: social networkers and gamers
The rise of new media technologies and digital online networks like
Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram has broadened the field in which youngsters
can be active as spontaneous art and image-makers. Computers and
digital networks offer new methods and resources for visual appropriation,
production and distribution. The gap, described by Jenkins and Wilson,
between formal art education and informal groups formed around popular
culture in the digital realm is even deeper compared to ‘analogue’ informal
groups. The cultural production in fan-based or graffiti communities still
Figure 4: Evan Roth - Graffiti Taxonomy: Paris
(fragment) (© 2009, Evan Roth)
To highlight the diversity of forms in graffiti tags, artist
Evan Roth selected the most commonly used letters by
graffiti writers out of over 2,400 photographs of tags in
the streets of Paris. These selected letters were then
isolated from their background and displayed in a grid
covering the facade of the Fondation Cartier in Paris.
An interactive version of this work is published online:
http://graffiti-taxonomy.com.
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has some reference to traditional artistic learning trajectories, in contrast to
bloggers or gamers, whose cultural production is sometimes not recognized
as ‘artistic’ or ‘educational’, and sometimes not even as a ‘product’. The processes
of communication, play, creative production and learning are intertwined
in informal groups formed around popular digital culture, expressed
through multiple forms that change along with the expanding possibilities
of digital technology.
Teenagers have various motivations to start online gaming, blogging,
texting and working with image and sound: they are motivated by the
need to communicate regularly with others, to be entertained or to find out
about particular problems or personal interests (Drotner, 2008). Weber and
Mitchell (2008) consider the young girls’ social network home pages they
researched as an extension of their bodies into cyberspace. The Myspace
home pages they studied, belonging to teenagers aged 11 to 16, can be seen as
visual evidence of their existence, expressed through texts, type, graphic elements
and self-made or appropriated imagery. These youngsters personalize
their sites through an eclectic mix of old and new media in which self-made
artwork is as valuable as direct quotations from popular culture. Weber and
Mitchell point out that these posted identities are neither homogeneous nor
predictable, even if the producers “all eat from the same popular buffet”
(2008, p. 32). Although the activities of teenagers on social networking sites
are far less ‘specialized’ compared to the communities of fan artists, cosplayers
and graffiti artists, they still express individual forms of cultural production.
Ito et al. (2010) and Kafai and Peppler (2011) have underlined that the
DIY interest-driven activities (“messing around”) in these social networks
strengthens multimodal design skills and lowers the barrier towards creative
media production for a much wider group than the typical ‘nerds’.
The cultural production that takes place in online gameplay communities
perhaps differs most from traditional art education. A personal
home page still has reference to familiar forms of individual expression like
scrapbooks, diaries, teenage bedrooms or photo albums, whereas video
games can hardly be compared with any ‘analogue’ predecessors. The controversial
reputation of video games (simplistic, violent and addictive)
has not really contributed to their recognition as creative or instructive
resources. However, studies among groups of gamers have shown that
complex popular computer games can offer players situated experiences
in which they actively construct meaning, thus expanding their knowledge
and creative skills (Prensky, 2002; Squire, 2006; Veen & Jacobs, 2008). Squire
(2006, p. 19) states that “games are not a static code; rather, they are sociotechnical
networks.” He argues that forms of social learning become most
prominently visible in online multiplayer games like World of Warcraft,
Toontown and Star Wars Galaxies. In these massively multiplayer online roleplaying
games (MMORPG), thousands of players interact with each other in
real time on a worldwide scale. Players create original stories by inhabiting
another identity (the avatar), which functions as an alter ego of their offline
personality. Squire also shows that within the same game players construct
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
different meanings based upon their interests and cultural backgrounds,
sometimes far beyond the intentions of the game designers.
The ‘misuse’ of game technology is taken to the extreme by communities
of gamers and hackers who discover new forms of artistic expression
by decoding and remixing game technology (Lowood, 2008; Schäfer, 2011).
Demoscene (a subculture in which non-interactive digital audio-visual clips
are produced) and machinima (cinematic productions using games to generate
computer animations) groups use game codes, sounds and imagery to
create original programs, music and animated films. Professionals in the
media and entertainment industry watch these communities carefully, as
they are seen as breeding places for new talent. Participation in demoscene
and machinima communities evidently requires a high level of technical
skill, yet even these specialized groups of ‘nerds’ conform to the image that
most young producers of digital culture are fascinated by the way they can
use technology, rather than technology itself (Drotner, 2008). An illuminating
example of how digital content is shared, sampled and remixed via the
Internet is the ongoing art project Technoviking, by Mathias Fritsch (figure 5).
Music groups: pop musicians
Although pop musicians are not primarily inspired by visual culture, including
research on informal music communities seems nevertheless relevant
for two reasons. Popular images, texts, sounds and music are inseparable as
important inspirational sources for youth communities (Duncum, 2004).
Many of the above-mentioned informal groups formed around popular
culture are loosely or tightly connected to musical genres or pop cultures:
Social networkers publish and share their favorite music online, cosplayers
are affiliated with Japanese J-pop (cosplay.com, 2009) and graffiti writers
Figure 5: Valtteri Mäki - Viking3
(© 2007, FossaDouglasi (Valtteri Mäki), used under
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic
Licence)
In 2000 the German artist Matthias Fritsch filmed a
muscular, intimidating dancing man during a dance
event in Berlin. From 2007 his video became a popular
Internet meme named “Techno Viking” with more than
40 million hits and over 4000 video responses on
YouTube. Fritsch has created an ongoing online
archive with thousands of DIY responses to the
original video in the form of video re-enactments,
remixed images, blogs and forum discussions.
http://www.technoviking.tv
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Chapter 2

Investigation phase
have a historical bond with hip-hop subcultures. Musical communities in
turn are often visually defined through specific imagery to be found in
clothing styles, band logos, cover art and music videos. A further reason to
include informal musical participatory cultures in my study is the similarity
between production styles among informal visual and musical communities.
The trends that gave rise to participatory cultures (new technologies,
DIY production and convergence) make media production easily accessible
and allow participants to produce content in holistic, interdisciplinary manners.
This already became clear when discussing the practices of machinima
and demoscene groups in which images, sounds and music are constantly
digitally created, appropriated and remixed, all in close interconnection.
One of the leading voices in the research of informal popular music
learning practices is the British professor of music education Lucy Green
(Welch et al., 2004). Her studies among guitar-based rock musicians showed
that the learning styles of pop musicians differ substantially from the way
music is generally taught in formal music education (Green, 2001). She distilled
five fundamental principles that define the characteristics of informal
popular music learning. First, informal music learning starts with the music
the participants choose for themselves. It is music they understand and with
which they identify. This differs from formal educational practices where students
mostly learn music that they do not know, which is selected by the
teacher. Second, the main method for informal music learning is copying
music recordings by ear. This is different from learning music through notation,
instructions or exercises that go beyond the music itself as is often seen
in music classes. Third, informal music learning takes place through selfdirected,
peer-directed and group learning. Knowledge is acquired by listening,
watching, imitating and talking among friends. There is no formal
tutor-pupil relationship like in classical music education, nor is there adult
guidance like in school practices. Fourth, informal music learners learn holistically
because they start learning by studying and copying musical examples
in their full complexity. The learning process in formal music education is
often the exact opposite: teachers set out learning trajectories from simple to
complex, often using specially composed ‘school music’ and exercises. Fifth,
informal music learners typically integrate processes like listening, performing,
improvising and composing, whereas formal music education tends to
focus on just one of these activities at a time (Green, 2008).
It seems that music teachers are as much ‘stuck in the past’ as the art
teachers who were mentioned by Wilson. Teachers in formal music education
face the same challenges to keep their curricula up to date with a field in
which pop genres and styles change, subdivide and mix at overwhelming
speed (Kahn-Harris, 2007; Prins, 2007). Just as in the visual realm, digital technology
has provided new ways in which musical meaning can be produced
and interpreted. Väkevä states that “the rock-based practice of learning songs
by ear from records and rehearsing them together to perform live or to
record is just one way to practice popular music artistry today” (Väkevä, 2010,
p. 59). She argues that Green’s fundamental principles of informal popular
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
music learning are too limited because they neglect the modes of popular
music that are influenced by the use of turntables, samplers, computers and
music games. Participants in these communities create music through
modes like turntablism, remixing, collective online songwriting and music
video production (Väkevä, 2010). Especially among ‘digital’ musicians, the
Internet functions as an open source archive in which any existing sound,
loop or track is a potential building brick towards a new production. These
musicians have cultural rules and learning methods that differ from rock
band practices, but even more from the traditional school music curriculum.
The gap between formal and informal popular music learning that Green
demonstrated is even wider and deeper when taking into account the
creative possibilities offered by new technologies. The art project 19:30 by
Aleksandra Domanovic (figure 6) illustrates how the Internet is artistically used
as an open source archive for participatory audiovisual productions.
Defining informal visual networks
The studies among informal visual and musical production groups that I
discussed in the previous section provide us with additional characteristics
with regard to a definition of informal visual networks
First of all, informal visual networks develop specific rules, (visual)
languages and values through longitudinal engagement in a subject, which
can prevent non-members from recognizing their creative or educational
value. Jenkins already mentioned the expertise of members in participatory
cultures, but the complexity of that expertise becomes manifest in the practices
of fan artists and graffiti writers. What non-members could describe as
standardized and meaningless could be interpreted among network members
as original and expressive. Popular culture seems easy accessible for a
broad audience, but the affinity spaces within popular culture in which the
communities operate can be considered specialist areas with complex
forms of knowledge.
Figure 6: Stills from the Yugoslavian
Radio Television news broadcast indent
(©1958, Jugoslavenska radiotelevizija,
public domain)
The project 19:30 (2010 - ongoing) by
Aleksandra Domanovic consists of an
audiovisual archive and audio remixes
and is presented online (nineteenthirty.
net)and offline as a two-channel video
installation. Domanovic has collected
television news music and images from
the geographic region of ex-Yugoslavia,
which she offers to musicians as an
invitation to edit and remix them into
new tracks. The project discusses the
value of news shows as a national
symbol and the popularization of
electronic dance music during the last
war in former Yugoslavia.
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Secondly, members of informal visual networks are motivated by various
reasons and ambitions. Some network members can grow to become creative
and highly skilled artists, whereas some will remain at a basic level of
instinctive visual production. Involvement in the community does not
automatically correlate with their professional ambitions. The community
is an important outlet in the life of many members, parallel to their professional
career.
Lastly, the methods by which visual production takes place in communities
of practice can be further specified. Jenkins mentioned sampling
and remixing as important methods for cultural expression in participatory
cultures. These terms seem to address activities in the digital realm in particular.
Based on the studies conducted among ‘analogue’ fan artists, cosplayers
and pop musicians, I can add copying as an important activity, often
serving as a basis for creative processes in informal networks. Another characteristic
that attracts attention is the interdisciplinary nature of production
communities around popular culture. Members of these communities
are inspired by various media (film, comics, music and games) and new
technologies enable them to produce, remix and distribute content in
interdisciplinary ways.
Combined with Wenger and Jenkins’ characteristics, these complementary
features form a final definition of informal visual networks that I
will use in my research (table 4).
What members of informal visual networks value, and how they
produce and learn, differs significantly from formal art education practices.
Now that I have defined informal visual networks, it is useful to contrast
them with their formal ‘counterpart’ at school (Figure 7). I have to take into
account, though, that the characteristics of formal schools are derived from
the research of informal learning practices that I discussed in this chapter.
These studies often neglect the variations among different school practices,
especially those school curricula that have already found connections with
popular culture, new media, and informal visual learning practices through
constructivist learning approaches. The characteristics of school practices
mentioned here should therefore be viewed as general characteristics of
traditional school art curricula.
Participants in communities of practice are active in domains that
they choose themselves based on affinities with forms of popular culture
in which they have developed some sort of expertise. This differs from the
traditional art curriculum in which the teacher is the expert, who prescribes
the examples and assignments. The source of these examples and assignments
is usually not found in popular culture but in art history and in
school practices (student handbooks and school art examples.)
A visual community of practice is formed spontaneously and by a
bottom-up approach, and allows variety among its members with regard to
population, ambitions and artistic levels. Formal art classes are formed by a
top-down approach and are much more homogenous because students are
of the same age and have to meet uniform criteria and artistic levels.
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53

Remixing the Art Curriculum
Domain: shared concerns, interests and competences
Affinity spaces within popular culture
– Complex rules, (visual)languages and values
– Members feel and act as experts
Community: joint activities, information sharing, peer learning
– Groups form on the basis of a bottom-up and ad hoc approach
– Variety with regard to population, motivation, ambition and artistic levels
– Strong support for creating & sharing
– Informal mentorship
Practice: production of a shared repertoire of resources
Experimental, holistic, longitwudinal interdisciplinary visual production through: play, simulation,
performance, copying, sampling and remixing
Table 4: Characteristics of informal visual networks
Informal visual networks
Domain: shared concerns, interests and
competences
Affinity spaces within popular culture
– Complex rules, (visual)languages and
values
– Members feel and act as experts
Community: joint activities, information
sharing, peer learning
– Groups form on the basis of a
bottom-up and ad hoc approach
– Variety with regard to population,
motivation, ambition and artistic
levels
– Strong support for creating
& sharing
– Informal mentorship
Practice: production of a shared
repertoire of resources
Experimental, holistic, longitudinal
interdisciplinary visual production through:
play, simulation, performance, copying,
sampling and remixing
Traditional school art curriculum
Domain:
– Prescribed curriculum with examples
and assignments derived from art
history and school art practice
– The teacher is the expert
– Students have limited space for
personal visual fascination and
identity formation
Community:
– Formal ‘homogeneous’ classes that
have to meet uniform criteria and
artistic levels
– Visual production is seen as an
individual and autonomous process
– Learning is teacher directed
Practice:
– Production is aimed at learning,
not at establishing a shared
repertoire that is meaningful in
real-world contexts
– Production in mono-disciplinary
subjects, often divided into short
assignments
– Traditional materials and techniques
– Copying, sampling and remixing are
discouraged
Figure 7: Characteristics of informal visual networks mirrored with characteristics of traditional school art curricula
54
Chapter 2

Investigation phase
Members of visual communities learn through collective forms of production,
sharing and peer learning, whereas students in traditional art classes
operate mostly as individuals, coached and assessed by their teachers.
Lastly, informal visual networks build shared repertoires from a
holistic perspective, using experimental interdisciplinary methods and
techniques, often in close connection with contemporary technological
developments. Copying and remixing are important methods of visual production,
especially among community novices. The practice of art classes
deviates substantially because the shared goal of the enterprise is learning;
visual production is just an instrument to achieve that goal and the products
have little significance in real-world contexts beyond the school. Visual
production itself often takes place in mono-disciplinary subjects, in which
students work with traditional materials and techniques and where copying
and appropriation of existing images are seen as hardly creative.
Conclusion
The literature review in this chapter was aimed at investigating the student’s
everyday visual interests and productions. To investigate the features of
contemporary visual production and learning outside schooling contexts,
I defined the characteristics of informal visual networks: on- and offline
communities of practice that form spontaneously around specific forms of
visual culture. Informal visual networks differ significantly from the traditional
school art curriculum with regard to both their sources of inspiration
and their methods of production and learning. Researchers like Jenkins,
Wilson, Manifold, Freedman and Squire advocate arts teachers taking the
informal cultural production of their students into account and using it
to improve and update their curriculum. I endorse that viewpoint: it is
important for art teachers to realize that the school is not the center of the
student’s world, and that the art curriculum in particular offers opportunities
to establish connections between professional practice and the visual
culture in which students are immersed. The connection between informal
and formal art learning can be put into practice if teachers acknowledge
students as experts in specific affinity spaces around popular culture, and
if they offer them opportunities to produce personal and meaningful work
that is based on this expertise.
I want to emphasize that I neither wish to glorify the practices of
informal visual networks, nor to suggest that schools should copy these
practices without question. While informal visual networks indeed offer
exciting possibilities for visual education, they also offer also opportunities
for recreation and community spirit to those who are much less interested
in artistic development. Research has shown that students indeed want a
greater connection between school and their informal art production, yet
they nevertheless expect to learn different things at school than at home
(Groenendijk et al., 2010; Haanstra, 2010). A traditional art curriculum loses
relevance for students if it lacks all connection with their affinity spaces and
their spontaneous artistic production. But such an art curriculum would
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
also lose its relevance if the formal curriculum were identical to the artistic
activities youngsters undertake in their spare time. Moreover, some informal
communities have ethical principles that collide with the school culture.
Activities like hacking, graffiti, and the use of violent, racist or obscene
imagery are common practices in some communities, but they are much
less acceptable in school contexts or in society at large. Obviously contemporary
art education does offer an excellent platform for critical reflection on
all visual cultures, including those that are morally disputable (Duncum,
2009b). However, this seems to work best when students from various communities
are in the same class. It is unrealistic to think that every class is
populated with a colorful blend of different cultures, subcultures and
experts in various affinity spaces. Some classes are inhabited by groups that
draw from one dominant cultural well. El Hadioui has effectively demonstrated
this problem by researching the dominant macho street culture
among youngsters in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, which proved to be diametrically
opposed to the school culture in almost every aspect (El Hadioui,
2010). In spite of this, El Hadioui emphasizes that both ignoring and glamorizing
informal street cultures at school would be pedagogically irresponsible.
Teachers in a relevant, contemporary art curriculum should not
ignore the informal visual networks in which young people are active.
Students develop meaningful visual knowledge and skills outside of
school, which they can explore, expand and discuss in the context of formal
art education. If that goal is achieved, the art class will become a learning
community in which there is a continuous exchange and discussion of
knowledge from the professional art world and from popular culture, with
the art teacher acting simultaneously as a coach, a master and a peer expert
for his students.
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Informal Visual Networks
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
3
Visual Culture
Learning
Communities2:
How and What
Students Come
to Know in
Informal Art
Groups
2 This chapter is a slightly adapted version of a paper that was published as:
– Freedman, K., Heijnen, E., Kallio-Tavin, M., Kárpáti, A., & Papp, L. (2013). Visual
Culture Learning Communities: How and what students come to know in informal
art groups. Studies in Art Education, 54(2), 131-143.
58
Chapter 3

Investigation phase
In chapter 2 and 3, the same phenomenon is studied, although it is described
under different names: ‘informal visual networks’ (chapter 2), and ‘visual culture
learning communities’ (chapter 3). The difference in names is due to the fact that
the study in chapter 3 is part of an ongoing international research project on
visual culture learning communities that was initiated by Kerry Freedman
(Northern Illinois University). This investigation is relevant in the context of this
dissertation because it can be seen as an empirical study of the informal visual
networks that I characterized in chapter 2. As such, chapter 2 and 3 are presented
in this thesis as theoretical and empirical investigations into present-day selfinitiated
visual practices, which inform a model for authentic art education.
This article is the report of a large-scale, international research
project involving focus group interviews of adolescent and young
adult members of a variety of self-initiated visual culture groups in
five urban areas (Amsterdam, Budapest, Chicago, Helsinki, and
Hong Kong). Each group was established by young people around
their interests in the production and use of a form of visual culture.
The research questions for this study focused on: a) conditions of
visual culture communities, b) group practices in visual culture
communities, c) individuals in a visual culture community, and d)
peer teaching and learning processes. The results of this investigation
indicate that visual culture groups act as powerful student
communities for auto-didactic and peer initiated learning. Although
the education that occurs in these groups may be considered informal,
students maintain them to increase their art knowledge and
skills, as well as for entertainment and social networking. Several
answers to each research question are reported and applications
for formal art education are recommended.
Adolescents and young adults learn more through their social interactions
around favorite forms of visual culture than adults may realize. For example,
many adolescents and young adults form their own visual culture networks
outside of school that act as learning communities (Freedman, 2003, 2006).
The influence of students’ visual culture interests motivates the establishment
of art-related social practices in these groups that result in an informal
type of education.
This article is an account of an international study of these visual
culture learning communities (VCLCs) of adolescents and young adults.
The article reports on the data collected concerning learning about artistic
creation in and around a visual culture form.
Contemporary learning theorists have conceptualized learning as
a process of participation in meaningful group practices “where moments of
understanding and new forms of knowledge emerge from social contexts.
Knowledge in this sense is not so much an object to possess, but an activity to
engage” (Sefton-Green & Soep, 2007, p. 847). From this perspective, knowledge
is not a static possession but, rather, is continually and actively obtained,
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
shared, and renewed. Researchers and theorists have argued that we have
entered a new era in which cultural production is no longer the domain of
professional experts; rather, it is a shared province in which experts and amateurs
build cultural knowledge together, using digital technology to produce,
publish, share, and remix content (Lessig, 2008; Mason, 2008; Shirky, 2010).
Examples of research exist regarding informal learning communities
from the perspective of social learning psychology (Lave and Wenger’s communities
of practice) and from the perspective of informal art and media production
(Jenkins’s participatory cultures). The phrase communities of practice
was introduced by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) as part of their theory
of situated learning. They argued that learning is always an integral part of
social practice situated in specific contexts. Lave and Wenger posited that the
study of informal learning is important because people are all members of
various formal and informal communities of practice in which learning
builds. Jenkins et al. (2006) saw the activities of fan communities as exemplars
of a broad cultural change in which the borders between producers and
consumers, creators and audiences are blurred. This participatory culture is
“a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement,
strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type
of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is
passed along to novices” (p. 3).
Based on an earlier study of communities formed around types of visual
art or design that involve art learning and production, Freedman (2003)
emphasized the importance of situated learning and participation connected
to student interests in art and art education. Freedman (2006) argued that
some distinction should be made between two types of overlapping groups
that function as visual culture communities. The first type is heritage communities,
“groups of people who have long established forms of visual culture that
represent them…. [in these groups] images and objects are used to enhance
established social life. In a sense, visual culture becomes a superstructure of
the community” (p. 27). Heritage communities are long-lived, heavily influenced
by older adults, including family and mentors, and embedded in daily
life, as in the case of ethnic culture, religious, or gender groups.
The second type is interest communities that grow up around a form
of visual culture per se, which tend to marginalize commonalities of daily life.
For students in these groups, visual culture is often a means to enhance or
escape daily life. These communities tend to be temporal in character in that
their membership is limited by time constraints in students’ lives and their
members may move in and out of a group at will. Here, “visual culture is a
substructure; community is built upon it” (Freedman, 2006, p. 27).
Global youth subcultures of many types have emerged increasingly
as adolescents and young adults have gained access to people around the
world. For example, in the 1980s, youth groups created a sophisticated set of
visual, verbal, and gestural metaphors. Creating a lifestyle through visual
culture, music, and performance, Goths, New Age Glams, Retro Hippies, and
Ravers were seen on the streets of New York, Paris, and Budapest alike (Karpati
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& Kovacs, 1997; Polhemus, 1996).
Manifold’s (2009) study of nearly 300 cosplayers and fan artists
between the ages of 14 and 24 who publish their self-made work online at
deviantArt.com, Elfwood, and Cosplay.com, demonstrated that making art is
valued by these students, in part, because “mundane experiences were balanced
by excursions into fantasy” (Manifold, 2009, p. 68). Fan participants
who reach a high level of artmaking in these groups do not necessarily
aspire to a career as professional artists, but construct meaning through personal
expression, social interactions, and identity development. Because
these fan-based practices are becoming increasingly rooted in various sorts
of artistic production, based on his study of dojinshi art and artists in Japan,
Wilson (2003) argued that art teachers need to act as negotiators among
conventional art, emerging art, and student-initiated art. The current study
was based on four main research questions:
Question 1: Conditions of Visual Culture Communities – Why do adolescents
and young adults form visual culture groups and how do they
function?
Question 2: Group Practices in a Visual Culture Community – What
creative and social practices do group members use as part of their
participation in a visual culture community?
Question 3: Individuals in a Visual Culture Community – What types of
knowledge do participants learn in visual culture communities?
Question 4: Peer Teaching and Learning Processes – What processes
and strategies do adolescents and young adults use to peer teach
and learn in visual culture communities?
Because of the large amount of data collected during this study, we focus on
the learning aspects of each question in this article and will address the peer
teaching methods that occur in visual learning communities in future work.
Methodology
The project was conducted in countries that have different cultures but
share a global media immersion in order to appropriately apply findings
concerning the use of global visual culture forms across international contexts.
The research sites were Amsterdam, Budapest, Chicago, Helsinki, and
Hong Kong. The groups selected for this study were not institutionalized;
rather, they are self-formed and operate outside the control of formal
education.
As a first step in the selection process, the research team formulated
criteria for selective sampling (Coyne, 1997) to assure that the selected groups
were both varied and mutually compatible. These criteria were:
– A particular emphasis in the country of the researcher;
– Primary reason for group is visual; they create visual culture;
– The movement must attract young people (focus on 12-22 years old);
– Multicultural groups when possible;
– Group members formally assemble: physically or on the internet;
– The group is autodidactic.
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In the second stage of the selection process, the researchers applied a snowball
method of sampling that involved each researcher having contact with
one or more members of the group and gaining agreement to be introduced
to the group. The researcher then arranged face-to-face focus group interviews.
Snowball- or chain sampling is a form of purposeful sampling that
enables researchers to locate key cases through information-rich informants
(Patton, 1990, p. 176). The choice for snowball sampling was based on both
theoretical and practical reasons. The main theoretical reason was that the
goal of the selection process was to discover varied, critical local cases in
each of the participating cities. To detect such practices, researchers
searched for local experts who could inform them about the communities.
The research team acknowledged that the exploration of innovative, sometimes
‘underground’ cultural forms is always based on subjective judgments
to a certain extent. Although interpretative generalizations from sample to
a larger population were desirable, they depended on a careful cross-case
analysis and much less on the ‘objectivity’ of the selection process. The main
practical reason for the use of snowball sampling was related to the fact that
the researchers did not have direct access to the communities. Most of the
interviewed groups are built on friendships and are not directly accessible
for adults or non-members. To organize the focus group interviews the
researchers needed contact persons that could introduce them to other
community members and co-organize the group interviews.
Members from 10 visual culture communities participated in the
study. In three of the cities, one high school (14-18 years old) and one undergraduate
age group (18-25 years old) were selected for case studies. In one
city (Amsterdam), members from three groups participated and in one city
(Hong Kong) one group participated. The groups were established around
the following visual culture forms: manga, video production, demoscene,
street art, computer games, tabletop games, fan art, conceptual art, graffiti,
and cosplay. The groups were of various sizes; 102 members across the
groups participated in the study on a volunteer basis.
Each of the visual culture communities was handled by a local
researcher as an independent case study, but the same set of questions was
used by all researchers to interview the participants. Visual data included
original artworks and photographic and/or video documentation of group
activities. Voice-recorded, front-end interviews were conducted with members
of each of the 10 groups. Transcripts based on recordings of languages
other than English were translated into English before analysis so as to facilitate
crosscheck analysis by all members of the international research team.
Focus group interview transcripts and creative products were then
subjected to qualitative analyses using common phrase and close-reading
thematic content analyses of the transcripts. Each of the research team
members collated thematic content across all transcripts as well as within
their own transcripts. To analyze patterns across the transcripts, the
research team applied a combined deductive and inductive approach.
The deductive approach entailed that all data were coded with four a priori
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themes, derived from the main research questions: why do students form
VCLC’s?; how do VCLC’s function?; what do participants learn in VCLC’s? and
how do participants learn in VCLC’s? The coded sections were then divided
over four researchers, who each identified and analyzed additional themes
across the data. This inductive approach enabled the researchers to discover
new patterns of meaning within each of the predefined themes and across
all cases. The results of the analyzed focus group interviews are reported in
the following sections with quoted responses.
Why students form visual culture communities: common interests
and learning outside of school
Two themes reported here emerged from the data concerning why the interviewees
started and participated in VCLCs. The themes are: social networking
through common interests and a desire to learn about art/visual culture that
tends to be missing from school curriculum.
Social networking through common interests
It is the experience of the researchers that adults tend to think of VCLCs
as formed primarily for purposes of participant entertainment. To some
extent these groups are for entertainment and socializing. Students are
motivated by the need to communicate regularly with others, to be entertained,
and to address personal problems and interests (Drotner, 2008).
The gamers, the only group in which not all of the members produce their
own art, spoke consistently about using games as a form of therapy and
escape. However, we refer to these groups as VCLCs because each group of
adolescents and young adults studied during this research project was
initiated as a result of a common interest in a visual culture form. As one
female video artist group member stated, “It is our common interest in
Figure 8: Inaho & Kirui – Rock is love
(© 2010, Kirui)
Fan art work based on virtual pop icon
Hatsune Miku, main character of the
singing synthesizer application Vocaloid
by Crypton Future Media
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mass communication, the selection of themes, times when we criticize
the products, films, photos, etc., that makes us wish to hang out together.”
A male street artist stated, “I’m convinced that people with the same interests
will always find each other in the end. Whether I’m in Spain, the Czech
Republic, Morocco… you’ll always meet people from the scene.” Often,
members of a VCLC also have common interests with regards to the ideas
and messages conveyed through their visual culture form. Their ability to
express these ideas develops through their membership in the group.
A male manga artist stated: “When I was younger, I didn’t think about social
issues, but now my work focuses more on those topics - such as dissatisfaction
with social conditions that I wouldn’t tell someone about, but I can do
it in my comics.”
Members of most of the groups view the products of their groups
as a form of creative work, at least in the sense of creating a work of art. As
one male video artist said, “It may be strange for you to hear that there are
kids who come together in their free time to ‘work,’ to produce something,
and not just hang out, but it is exactly like that.”
The gamers view their group activity as a creative endeavor in the
sense that their escape from one world is a process of participating in the
creation of another world. As a male gamer stated: “It’s also the fact of fantasy…
it’s part of the game; it’s supposed to be better than their own [life].
That’s why they play it because they want to experience what this person’s
action/ gaming figure is experiencing.”
Many VCLCs are formed as a result of friendships and are sustained,
in part, because friendships have developed. Relationships in these communities
develop as a result of interactions that forward the group’s interests
and are similar to friendships that emerge among colleagues in professional
communities. “So, this is ‘a working relationship’ in a way, but really, isn’t it
something like in real life? When you go out and work with a team, you do
not have to love them all!” (female video artist).
A desire to learn about art missing from school
Most of the young people in these groups freely acknowledge their desire to
learn and seek a form of art education in VCLCs: “basically, I want to learn all
about media. We learn a lot from each other, we become more experienced,
we share ideas” (male video artist). Many of the participants stated that it is
important to gain knowledge from other group members. One female conceptual
artist stated, “We learn from each other.” Another female conceptual
artist stated: “We inspire each other… we need each other.” A male street artist
said: “The people around me are my sources of inspiration - the people I
hang with.”
VCLC members report that these groups are formed because formal
education seems to be artistically or culturally narrow. Some of the comments
made about this issue concerned a lack of availability of art classes.
But most of the group members who discussed this issue saw it as a deliberate
decision on the part of art teachers to teach traditional forms and avoid
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teaching what students are interested in learning. One male fan artist group
member stated:
Instructors were pushing to get the anatomy right so that when
you go into doing 3D, your anatomy was right; it wasn’t anime.
They did kinda discourage doing anime style or something that
was already been done, I guess. They wanted you to look at the
body and see how it looks, how it set compositionally on the
stage, look at the lighting, try to do that rather than try to conform
it to an anime style type thing.
However, other participants said that the problem is an adult bias against
popular art forms in formal education that precipitated the need for the
students to establish their own art learning networks outside of school.
As group members stated:
We have [members] that tend to have a style closer to something
anime or Japanese style. Instructors would tend to have a more
negative view toward it simply because they feel that in a more
Western area you should be focusing more on a Western theme.
(male fan artist)
And, “they gave us a legal [graffiti] spot in the bike shelter. But when I drew
graffiti-style in art class, the teacher told me that I had no talent for drawing”
(male graffiti writer).
Group members are extremely committed to increasing their
knowledge about the visual culture form to which their group is dedicated.
In fact, a surprising number of the participants specifically stated that they
are members of these groups to learn. “You are here to learn something
about the media and making good movies, so you learn from the others
through discussions” (female video artist). Many of the gamers discussed
learning about the games, how to improve their play, and how to role play as
motivations for belonging to the group. Most group members across VCLCs
and locations are so dedicated to their form that they devote most of their
time and money outside of school learning about and making their art
form. These groups are formed to support that commitment, although
group members have some difficulty in describing the feeling of their commitment
to adults. One male fan artist group member revealed the struggle
to explain their commitment to art particularly well:
Every single minute, every single second, every single nanoseconds
that I can spare, even if I’m not making art or putting what
I vision, what I see, into a medium, I mentally observe and think
about how the art is structured visually as imagery rather than
something that exists in a medium, and so - it’s a huge passion
of mine and - what was the original question?
How visual culture communities function: codes of behavior and
collaboration
The participants we interviewed meet in these and other groups using
several venues, including online. However, the VCLCs chosen for this study
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all meet face-to-face on regular occasions. Their face-to-face social interactions
and production practices are often determined and supported by
tasks the groups set for themselves. For example, the groups often break
into subgroups or pair up; the gamers sometimes play individually in the
same room and sometimes play in local teams. Two major forms of social
interaction are reported that emerged as ways the groups functioned:
codes of behavior and collaboration.
Group codes of behavior
A surprising result of this research was the extent to which codes of behavior
were established within these communities. Because adults tend to
believe that these groups are established primarily for entertainment, they
may think that all of these groups are freewheeling and unstructured.
However, many VCLCs have developed a code of rules, some of which are
quite strict. Some of the groups, like the graffiti writers, the manga group,
the cosplayers, and the fan artists, have common aesthetic rules as well as
behavior codes. Within the graffiti subculture, many rules exist to define
different styles and their associated behaviors, such as tags, throwups, and
silver-pieces. The manga group is extremely rule driven in terms of what is
acceptable in maintaining style. The fan art group, too, has a code of ethics.
A male fan artist stated:
I guess you just have to be respectful. Like don’t do anything
distasteful with the character. It’s just something fun - if it’s just
something fun, I think it’s okay, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable
putting their characters in situations with drugs or alcohol or
things like that. Steer clear of that and just be respectful with
someone else’s characters or environments.
The older members of the group, some of whom are, or plan to become,
professional artists, are more likely to develop their own characters, but they
make fan art to sell online and at conventions. The code of ethics for fan art
is supported by what sells; artwork with beloved characters that are in similar
clothing, environments, and situations to their main storylines appeals
to fans. At times, fans have voiced anger when they felt members of the fan
art group have gone too far in appropriating these characters.
All groups maintain rules about originality, copyright, and copying.
Although some of the rules are exacting and overlap with those we recognize
as copyright laws, most of the participants tend to be fairly permissive
about borrowing and sampling from other members of their group. This
aspect of VCLCs emphasizes that art is conceptualized as a shared object of
inquiry and creation. As one female video artist participant said, “thinking
of it, we all have some borrowed stuff, a camera movement, the still you
select, a scene… we learn from each other, this is our common resource.”
Interactions between individual and collaborative artmaking
An important characteristic feature of VCLCs is the collaborative aspect of
their art form. Most of the group members work together or at least work
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in the vicinity of each other to receive face-to-face feedback. Even those
participants who discussed individual characteristics of their art were
conscious of the benefits of a working environment shared with peers.
Most VCLCs, like the video, graffiti, and demoscene groups, make
collective work. But, other groups work together and share skills or ideas
face-to-face and online: “The way of working in a collective and communicating
with each other are things I learned” (female conceptual artist). “You
learn how it will be when you get out of school, have to start working with
a bunch of strangers… you have a boss who does not take no for an answer”
(male video artist).
Visual Culture Learning Communities create an atmosphere that
formal education strives for, but rarely achieves. For example, members
appear to produce more in less time when observing and being observed
by a peer who is inspiring and creative. The fan artists regularly utilize this
mutual reinforcement, gamers rely on it, and cosplayers use the group as
each plays a part in the performance context for one another. Demoscene
members, the manga group, and video group crews, who distribute work
within these groups based on who has the best skills and ideas, cannot work
without cooperation. “Usually that is an interesting process. Somebody has
created something that inspires the others who want to continue with it or
use it as a beginning to something else” (male demoscene artist).
Creative group practices involve not just production, but also,
group meaning making dependent on a shared set of aesthetic ideals and
values. This is developed, in part, through formal rules established by the
group, the aesthetic of the form, and the group character of the process:
“You tell the audience about each other’s works. You don’t just show your
own work. Everyone knows why another group member made something…
you know about the process, you were there during the process” (female
conceptual artist).
What participants learn in visual culture groups: artmaking
knowledge and art context knowledge
Once we established that adolescents and young adults initiate and join
these VCLCs for auto-didactic learning about visual culture, a central
question in the research was to uncover what young people learn by participating
in these local networks. Other research reports have listed a range
of learning not specific to artistic production that occurs within informal
student groups. For example, studies among groups of gamers show that
playing complex popular computer games can offer players situated experiences
in which they actively construct meaning, expanding their gaming
knowledge and creative skills (Prensky, 2002; Squire, 2006; Veen & Jacobs,
2008).
The participants in the current study mentioned various learning
results, depending on the type of VCLC the participant is active in. However,
two main learning themes surfaced across the groups: artmaking knowledge
and art context knowledge. These themes are subdivided into four categories.
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Technical knowledge: development of visual techniques and skills
In all the VCLCs, a great deal is learned regarding visual techniques.
Participation improves their techniques with regard to drawing, painting,
video production, costume design, sewing, make-up skills, lettering, stencil
cutting, or computer programming. The gamers mentioned visual skills
developed through game playing activities: “I think that you can learn proportions
and you can learn how stuff could look even if it’s not how it can
look in real life” (male gamer). In most interviewed groups the learning of
visual techniques and the development of (artistic) ideas are seen as parallel
processes: “Since you’re bouncing back ideas back and forth, you can be
encouraged as well as, I guess, incited to try new things” (female fan artist).
The only participants who explicitly made a distinction between the development
of ideas and technical skills were the members of the conceptual art
group. One female conceptual artist group member said: “I think we’re better
conceptually than technically. We all are capable of inventing nice things
now, but how to realize them is not always very clear”. After years of improving
their conceptual skills, they now feel the urge to learn more about professional
techniques.
In the ‘digital age’, it is striking that traditional media and techniques
like drawing, painting, and sewing are highly valued in several
VCLCs. Some groups are mainly focussed on analogue or digital techniques,
but in the conceptual art, fan art, manga, and street art groups digital and
analogue techniques are combined. Mixing and remixing of digital and
analogue techniques is a continuous process in these groups.
Conceptual knowledge: development of aesthetic and artistic ideas
In these apparently rule-driven communities, originality is valued and
encouraged. Each of the groups pushes new ideas. As one male demoscene
artist participant stated, “The group has to come up with something new
all the time. The spectators get easily bored with ‘one trick ponies.”
Aesthetic rules are clearly present, but within these frameworks,
there is a lot of room for personal expression of new ideas. “We have
Figure 9: Detail of a cosplay costume (© 2011, Mira Kallio-Tavin)
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‘productions’ and we have our own pieces too” (female video artist). This
involves, for example, group members creating their own characters and
stories: “Creating your totally own figure, like this one I did, by putting all
the extra pieces together without any instructions” (male Warhammer player);
“we come here to be unique, to find our own character and give it life”
(female cosplayer).
The search for individual style depends on persistence and is valued
by the group: “[Your] style changes and becomes more powerful and better
over the years. But at the basis is this same letter that you put on the wall for
a thousand times” (male street artist). A male gamer said it this way, “I took
it off images from games created into my own kinda style and I take video
game styles and make it into an awesome picture.”
For “outsiders,” style and quality differences are often hard to recognize
because they lack the trained eye that members of these VCLCs develop.
Group members realize this: “A lot of stuff resembles each other, but
when you take a closer look you can identify personal styles” (male graffiti
writer). But, as was the case in Bowen’s (1999) study of graffiti writers, we
found that participants tend to think of their peers as their primary audience
because they are considered more qualified to judge the quality of
visual work than people who know less about the form.
Knowledge of the visual culture field
In order to participate in a VCLC that functions around a particular visual
culture form, members must understand the field within which that
form exists. All of the groups gain knowledge from other people who are
immersed in their visual culture form. “I’ve learnt skills, I have been shown
resources, books and Internet sites… it is the culture that sucks you in, when
you are among fans of this culture” (female cosplayer). Participation in each
VCLC includes depth of study about the form and results in “insider knowledge”
about its cultures of practice.
This kind of knowledge, which is essential to membership, is shared
and discussed when members meet in real life or online. “If you start doing
graffiti as a young kid, you just have to know where graffiti came from to
start with. If not, you’re not taken seriously” (male graffiti writer). As Lave &
Wenger (1991) pointed out, knowledge comes from participation: “Reading
books is okay for outsiders, but if you want to enter the culture, to really get
inside, you have to do things and be things” (female cosplayer). Knowledge
of the field functions as a membership card. In the conceptual art, demoscene,
and video production groups, the focus is particularly on professional
fields like contemporary art, computer programming, and audiovisual
production. These VCLCs can be seen as the amateur or experimental version
of existing professional fields. The community offers participants ways to
learn about and enter the professional field: “The group helps me to meet
people who are ahead of us, that is really interesting” (female conceptual
artist); “we all are keen to understand why and how people make art. What
they have done and what there is to be done” (male demoscene artist).
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Identity formation: knowledge of the self and the world
The fourth major type of learning that was revealed in the study concerned
learning about oneself in relation to the world. Almost all of the groups
report learning that has to do with the diversity of people. Through the
VCLC, members felt that their social networks become bigger and more
diverse: “Being in these groups you’re not just exposed to people who share
your interests; you’re exposed to people who… come from completely different
backgrounds (female fan artist).
In many of the groups, knowledge about other people and cultures
has extended because they developed an international network: “You meet
these people from different countries in the streets. It influences the way
you see the world” (male street artist). In the cosplay and fan art groups,
the social network expands via online communication: “Sometimes, I find it
jokingly sad that I have more online friends than friends I interact with on a
regular basis in person, and most of those online friends are incidentally
artists. So, it’s definitely a social movement as well” (female fan artist).
Another theme that was addressed through almost all the VCLCs is
ways the groups help individuals to develop self-confidence. Participants
increasingly value themselves because they are taken seriously by a large
group of people: “It gives your life meaning when you have no meaning in
your life. It gives you accomplishment. You go out, you paint and think:
‘whoa, I’ve done something,’ rather than sit at home and do nothing”
(male graffiti writer). “It is great to feel competent! I am good at cosplay,
have always been, and it is fantastic to see how others enjoy my looks”
(female cosplayer).
Self and peer initiated learning: learning by doing and group support
as motivation
The methods of autodidactic and peer initiated learning vary to some extent
in the different types of visual communities. For example, peer interaction
as a way to stimulate learning might seem to be hidden in “hanging out”
together and exchanging technical tips in the gaming group, among the
Warhammer players, the street artists, and the graffiti writers. Other groups,
such as the video production, conceptual art, and demoscene groups, deliberately
use peer interaction as a structured method of learning. And the
manga artists, fan artists, and cosplayers function somewhere in between.
However, in all of the groups, peer initiated learning processes are fundamental
to group practice. Group members tend to share the idea of learning
as a part of the chosen lifestyle: “living it and learning it… it is really a way of
living” (female cosplayer).
Learning through immersion
VCLCs illustrate the importance of learning through the immersion of the
group. One of the male graffiti writers pointed out, “Doing it alone is not as
much fun than with a group.” The learning process may be so immersive for
the participants that they think of the visual method itself to be the educa-
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tor. As a male gamer explained, “The process of the game, like Halo or CoD,
it teaches you.” And, a male street artist said, “The street is your teacher.”
Learning through immersion often includes group discussion.
For gamers, for example, hanging out and talking about other issues than
game strategies with other gamers while playing might help them concentrate
and learn, as well as ease the pain of losing when needed. “And it’s
really when somebody’s talking to you when you’re on a game, if you can
multi-task while you’re doing that it’s great so you can just sit there and talk
with them” (male gamer). In gaming tournaments, learning happens
through confronting new gamers, new strategies and new games.
The process of learning through production is often represented
by group members as a matter of being influenced by one another. Many of
the group members explained this situation: “You’re also influenced
because of collective graffiti making. Want it or not: you’ll always influence
each other, unintentionally” (female graffiti writer); “I am constantly being
influenced, I am under the influence” (male cosplayer); “we feed off of each
other in the group, we gain different perspectives that influence your own
work” (female fan artist); “you pick things up from everyone that does graffiti”
(male street artist).
These influences occur both directly and indirectly. For example:
“We [directly] observe each other’s work processes and give ideas, in couples
and in bigger groups (male demoscene artist). But, VCLC members continually
learn and teach media techniques and other aspects of the production
process indirectly by observing other members as they work:
When I noticed that [another street artist] is always holding his
spray can at a slant, I tell him that it works better when you hold
it upright all the time. I told him also to try to keep less distance
between the can and the wall. These are useful tips that will
improve your painting immediately. (male street artist)
Figure 10: Duna, female graffiti writer (© 2009, Petra Katanic)
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When immersed in their respective groups and its products, members learn
indirectly by listening to peer discussions: “I learn rules by listening to other
people’s conversations. I have got a lot of ideas from listening to other
people” (male Warhammer player).
VCLCs act as vehicles for allowing such influences to occur while
catalyzing influence and enabling reflection to occur. As group members
produce visual culture, they learn by studying each other’s work and the
work of artists outside the group. One of the fan artists referred to her VCLC
as “a study group” in which members helped each other to develop skills.
A manga artist gave an example:
I learned from another group’s manga… they made Mr.
McDonald’s the god of death… he is making everyone addicted
to his hamburgers. It was funny, but also had an important social
message. I learned that we could combine social message with
our stories.
Group critique as a motivation for learning
Positive support and feedback as well as critique play important roles in
every VCLC. In loose communities, this tends to involve feedback around
completed works. However, within the more structured groups, various
types of support and critique are offered during the production process:
Getting feedback on my own work is very important, as is the
group support. Alone I get doubts about my ideas, but the group
helps me to believe in that what I do. The group helps to get the
stuff done that would otherwise be left unfinished. (male demoscene
artist)
A significant contribution of VCLCs to the personal growth of group members
is motivation to continue unfinished projects, even when they feel
frustrated or bored. Positive feedback helps to acknowledge the value of the
work. Critical feedback by close and trusted friends inside of the group is
also important:
If you are critiqued by someone you respect and look up to, you
will take that on board… it all depends on who the criticism is
coming from…. I wouldn’t give feedback easily to a stranger,
a person that I don’t know very well. I myself don’t like to get
feedback from strangers. (two male graffiti writers)
The production within a supportive group is a unique quality of VCLCs and
a motivation to improve the work and learning of individuals and the group
as a whole. Perhaps one of the group members said it best:
With the group, since everybody is excited about something,
when you contribute to an idea and everyone accepts that idea,
you feel very much connected together… you want to trigger that
sensation again and again and again; so it would only make you
more addicted to produce more art because you feel you are
accepted into this society. (female fan artist)
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Figure 11: pARTI Art Production Group - Big Momma Chair by Aloë (© Tobias Krasenberg en Anna van Lingen)
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Conclusion
VCLCs are playgrounds for creativity that have a synergy of personal and
professional growth. They are what schools tend not to be: places of authentic
learning where learners act on intrinsic motivation in an atmosphere of
sharing. The characteristic qualities of VCLCs that motivate and facilitate
learning among their adolescent and young adult members are often at
odds with formal art instruction. This research suggests that auto-didactic
learning, cooperative learning, and peer initiated learning should be common
practices in K-12 and undergraduate classrooms. Most schools, with
their large student populations, inflexible schedules, and limited access to
outside experiences are not well-suited for authentic, situated practice.
And, when well-intentioned instructors try to initiate auto-didactic learning
using traditional techniques, a laissez faire approach can result in a lack of
the structures of rules, leadership, and student accountability that this
research has demonstrated are important aspects of VCLC learning. But,
students may learn best in classrooms where VCLC techniques for supporting
student interests are practiced, including situated rules of ethics and
aesthetics (such as, copying is acceptable under certain conditions), leadership
based on peer mentor knowledge and experience, and accountability
through group forms of assessment.
Several specific recommendations can be made based on the study
of VCLCs to aid classroom instruction.
1. Artmaking knowledge develops across as well as within visual culture
forms. This study demonstrates that although participants focused on learning
about a particular form of visual culture in each VCLC, much of their art
knowledge can be applied across visual culture forms. Each particular visual
culture form led students to learn about related forms, concepts, and skills.
Helping students make connections among art forms in and out of school
can be an important contribution to art learning.
2. Students have a desire to learn about visual culture forms not included
in curriculum. Changing curriculum to intersect with student interests in
art requires that instructors understand what art learning can develop from
studying visual culture that students find interesting. This research has
shown that students realize that teachers may not support their visual culture
interests because “outsiders” do not understand these forms and the
behaviors associated with them. Although most students would not want
their visual culture forms subjected to a systematic appropriation by educators,
learning through student interests can be a vehicle for developing art
concepts and skills in school. In order for this to occur, teachers need to
know something about the subtleties of character, quality, and influence
of the range of visual culture.
3. Artmaking can promote social networking, which reinforces artmaking.
Social networking is important to most adolescents and young adults.
Establishing face-to-face and online social networking opportunities or
groups in and through the vehicle of an art class or club can enable students
to talk about their art interests and experiences, memberships in VCLCs,
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art knowledge they seek, and the visual culture forms they resist, which can
help teachers and students get a good picture of common interests.
4. Connecting individual and collaborative artmaking supports learning.
Although some students prefer to work alone, collaborative artmaking
can be constructive and facilitated in classroom settings by allowing students
with common interests to work together on group projects with
individual parts or on individual projects that relate to one another.
Brainstorming individual interests can help to establish groups that can
work together. Substantial research has demonstrated for decades that students
can learn best cooperatively in other schools subjects (e.g. Johnson,
2009; Johnson & Johnson, 2009), and this study reveals its strengths for
art learning.
5. Collaborative interactions result in the establishment of group codes
of behavior. Rather than just a means for classroom management, art classroom
rules may be most successful when tying ethical decision-making to
aesthetics so that they are both situated and motivated by artistic production.
Students should be responsible for making and upholding classroom
rules whenever possible. Traditional laissez faire techniques seem to have
been based on a misunderstanding of student interests as desiring complete
freedom. This research has demonstrated that students want structure and
guidance when learning about art.
6. Students learn through immersion. Since traditional school structures
usually do not facilitate immersion, connections should be made
between art done inside and outside of school. For example, auto-didactic
learning, and the application of classroom learning in an immersive environment,
can be assessed in school. To demonstrate auto-didactic learning
in class and the application of classroom learning outside of school, we recommend
that students include auto-didactic work, and explanations of the
conception and context of that work, in their school portfolios. Authentic
learning is best seen in school assignments that are complex, longitudinal,
and connected to experience outside of school.
7. Immersion deepens both art and art context knowledge. Art is always
attached to contextual knowledge that adds depth and complexity to meaning-making.
This study reveals that youth art experiences are, to a greater or
lesser extent, social experiences that involve various types of real and virtual
contexts. These real and virtual places for artmaking need to be taken into
account in art classrooms, so as to associate school-based practices with subculture
or interest group based forms.
8. Group critique and nurturing are motivations for learning. A processoriented,
on-going discussion of ideas, initial plans, drafts, and works-in-progress
is essential for fostering creative solutions. A climate of openness and
sharing that is structured both in terms of pedagogy and aesthetics helps
students teach and learn from each other. Peer learning occurs through peer
critique as well as mentoring and nurturing. The art of teaching is to establish
the delicate balance among these forces as part of the studio environment.
The study of VCLCs reveals new perspectives on the capabilities of
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learners to develop self-initiated plans and new pathways to their learning
that teachers can follow.
Contemporary perspectives of learning focus on each student
becoming a person who has a certain experience of the world (Wenger,
2006b). Participant culture involves a new understanding of art education,
not just in terms of classroom practice, but also in terms of student experience
in the world.
Domain: shared concerns, interests and competences
Affinity spaces within popular culture
– Complex rules, (visual)languages and values
– Members feel and act as experts
Community: joint activities, information sharing, peer learning
– Groups form on the basis of a bottom-up and ad hoc approach
– Variety with regard to population, motivation, ambition and artistic levels
– Strong support for creating & sharing
– Informal mentorship
Practice: production of a shared repertoire of resources
Experimental, holistic, longitudinal interdisciplinary visual production through: play, simulation,
performance, copying, sampling and remixing
Table 5: Characteristics of informal visual networks
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Postscript to chapters 2 and 3
Chapters 2 and 3 explored the self-initiated practices of young people and
adolescents that operate in communities formed around affinity spaces like
fan art, cosplay, manga, digital audiovisual production and gaming. In chapter
2, I discussed the results of a literature study in which these communities
were termed ‘informal visual networks’. It defined the characteristics
of the domain in which participants operate; how communities are formed
and how members learn from each other; and how they produce work.
Chapter 3 presented the results of an international empirical study among
contemporary practitioners in informal visual networks. Together with 4
other researchers, I investigated the practices of different informal visual
communities in the urban areas of Chicago, Budapest, Helsinki, Hong Kong
and Amsterdam.
Although both studies were conducted as separate research
projects, most of the characteristics of informal visual networks that
were distilled from literature were verified by the empirical group study.
Together, these studies enable me to answer the research question: How
does artistic development and learning take place among young people in informal
visual networks, and what are their sources of inspiration? The empirical
data in chapter 3 support the definition of informal visual networks that
was developed in chapter 2 (table 5).
The collected data confirm that informal visual producers identify
with particular affinity spaces within popular culture that enable participants
to develop specific forms of expertise and technical, aesthetic and
artistic knowledge. This characteristic is illustrated in chapter 3 by the
female cosplayer who stated: “Reading books is okay for outsiders, but if
you want to enter the culture, to really get inside, you have to do things
and be things”. Besides direct interaction with a group of people, membership
in an informal visual network involves a sense of belonging to a
community with a shared repertoire of resources. Members do not just
produce films, cosplays or fanart; they are video filmmakers, cosplayers
or fanartists.
The characteristics that I defined with regard to how members
interact and learn in these communities were also mirrored by the empirical
data. All of the groups we interviewed were self-initiated, had a varied
population, and their members had different motivations and artistic levels.
Strong support for creating and sharing among group members was clearly
phrased by one of the cosplayers, who stated: “we feed off of each other in
the group […]”. Participants are aware that they operate in a collaborative
practice; they share their knowledge and value each other’s work. The empirical
data also confirmed how members operate as ‘informal mentors’.
Informal visual producers learn through immersion in a shared practice,
which includes observing, advising and critiquing others. Informal mentorship
occurs both in indirect and direct forms, and is a fundamental aspect of
all the studied practices. Members learn indirectly by studying more experienced
members, both inside and outside the local community. Some
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networks use more direct and organized forms of informal mentorship like
mutual discussion and feedback sessions. Both positive and critical feedback
is most valued when it is provided by co-members, rather than by outsiders.
Last, although the creative output of informal visual producers
was not specifically investigated, the empirical data do reflect many of the
characteristics of the visual production processes that I defined. While
not always recognized by outsiders, all of the groups we studied value and
encourage creativity and the development of personal styles. Group conventions
function merely as points of departure rather than as rulebooks that
suppress individual freedom. They are part of a shared repertoire that is
continuously being negotiated and reinterpreted through sampling and
remixing. The practices of informal visual networks can be defined as
experimental because they include forms and themes closely related to contemporary
developments in visual culture, which are often not included in
the traditional school curriculum. All of the studied practices answer to the
longitudinal and holistic characteristics because participants produce work
through ongoing immersion in a domain of interest with a shared repertoire
of ideas and resources. The development of artistic techniques and
methods is seen as important, but is not a goal in itself. The interdisciplinary
aspect is most prominent in the practices of the groups who combine performance
and play with visual production (cosplayers, gamers, demoscene)
or the groups who combine analogue with digital techniques (conceptual
art, fan art, manga, street art).
Now that I have defined the characteristics of group learning and
visual production in the informal domain, my research project continues
by investigating the professional domain at which authentic art education
is aimed. That entails that we exit the world of cosplayers, graffiti writers
and fan artists and enter the domain of contemporary artists, art collectives
and curators.
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Introduction to chapters 4 and 5
Chapters 2 and 3 focused on the characteristics of contemporary visual
production in informal networks formed by young people. The presented
literature study and the international empirical survey inform the
pedagogical model that will be developed in the course of this thesis.
However, according to the concept of authentic art education, connection
with the ‘affinity spaces’ of students is only one side of the ideal art curriculum’s
coin. Authentic art education challenges teachers to a continuous
study of both the art perception and art production of their students, as
well as the developments within contemporary arts & culture (Haanstra,
2011). Authentic art education is aimed at two cultural practices at the same
time: based in situated learning theory it tries to cross-fertilize the informal
creative learning practices of students with the practices of art professionals.
The personal learning perspective within art education is important, as
has been discussed in chapters 2 and 3. But art education also represents a
professional field that is formed by artists, designers, curators, critics and
theorists. An art curriculum should keep pace with contemporary developments
in professional art in order to position students as players or authors
in an authentic practice. Chapters 4 and 5 will discuss my investigation of
contemporary creative production in the professional domain. Together
they form an answer to the research question: how does artistic development
and learning take place among contemporary artists and what are their sources
of inspiration?
Chapter 4 explores the features of contemporary art practices
through literature study. To formulate a tentative definition of characteristics
of contemporary art practices, the research focuses on the collaborative
and socially engaged aspects of contemporary art production, analyzing literature
from sociologists, philosophers, art theorists, curators, and artists.
In chapter 5, the literature-based definition will be empirically tried and
explored among living contemporary artists. It discusses data retrieved
from interviews with nine artists and collectives from different countries,
including Brazil, Vietnam, France, Germany and the Netherlands. The final
definition of professional contemporary art practices provides me with an
answer to the research question above, and informs the model of authentic
art education that I will develop and discuss in chapter 6.
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4
Social and
Collaborative
Turns in
Contemporary
Art
“At the beginning of the twenty-first century we
should go with a different model of doing art, a model
that integrates human activity and everyday life in a
different way”.
– Tania Bruguera, artist (Finkelpearl, 2013, p. 193)
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The contemporary art practices that are investigated and discussed
in this chapter are prominent among art professionals but they are
still on the periphery of the art education field. These collaborative
and socially engaged art practices offer art educators reference
points for the 21st century art curriculum in schools. Moreover, their
participatory character invites teachers to imagine not only “what
art can be, but also what learning can be” (Atkinson, 2012, p. 7).
Contemporary art practices interrogate contemporary society, and
their procedures and production methods explore our ideas about
communities, individual and shared knowledge, and communal
learning (Adams, 2012). My study of contemporary art practices
sheds light on the changing roles and visions of professional art
practitioners, offering reference points for an authentic art curriculum.
Social movements in the ambiguous field of globalized art
The field of contemporary art is broad, multi-faceted, dynamic and
globalized (Belting, 2009; Stallabrass, 2009; Zijlmans & Van Damme, 2008).
That makes it impossible to define the ‘typical’ contemporary artist based
upon aspects like visual style or materials & techniques that are used.
However, when focusing on the social aspects that have influenced the art
community in the last two decades, it is possible to address characteristics
that are typical for artists who operate in an interconnected world. Various
artists, curators, writers and philosophers have discussed a shift in contemporary
art that is visible in the topics that these artists choose, the way they
produce their work and the way they interact with others, within or outside
the art scene. This shift or the art movement that it brought forth bears
different names like Connective Aesthetics (Gablik, 1994), New Genre Public
Art (Lacy, 1994), Relational Aesthetics (Bourriaud, 2002), Dialogic Art (Kester,
2004), The Social Turn (Bishop, 2006), Social Aesthetic (Enwezor, 2007), The
Collaborative Turn (Lind, 2007), Collectivism (Stimson & Sholette, 2007), The
Educational Turn (Rogoff, 2008) and Altermodernism (Bourriaud, 2009b).
Behind each of these names lie different interpretations or explanations of
the changes in contemporary art practices, but aspects like process based,
collaborative work and political and social engagement are recurrent features
of contemporary art practices.
The ‘social collaborative turn’ in contemporary art should not be
seen as a general label to conceptualize present-day art in the way that art
historians use ‘modernism’ or ‘post-modernism’. Many theorists agree that
the heyday of post-modernism is over in the new millennium, but new
labels that try to seize the artistic spirit of current times are still largely
under debate (Kirby, 2009; Lipovetsky, 2005; Schwarz & Elffers, 2011). The
post-modern approach has not disappeared but seems to be merging with
other/older artistic attitudes into a form that is still hard to define.
Vermeulen and Van den Akker (2010) have labeled the ‘in between’ state
of contemporary art itself as a new movement called ‘Meta Modernism’.
In their view, the contemporary artist alternates between the enthusiasm
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and hope of modernism and the irony and melancholy of post-modernism.
The skeptical post-modern spirit of plenty, pastiche and deconstruction is
forming an alliance with a (re)newed attitude of reflection, sincerity and
idealism. Vermeulen and Van den Akker do not specifically address the
emergence of socially engaged and collaborative tendencies, but the advent
of social artistic strategies does fit in an art world that is neither/both modernist
nor/and post-modernist. Nevertheless, the explanation of the ‘social
collaborative turn’ is better served when the discourse is centered around
the changing relations between the worlds of art and non-art, and much less
by the opposition of modern/postmodern (Rancière, 2006). Contemporary
social and collaborative practices can function as heuristic lenses into the
shifts between art and society, without having to walk the slippery path
towards the definition of an all-embracing label.
The emergence of socially engaged collaborative art as avant-garde
practice is often dated in 1989, after the collapse of Communism in Eastern
Europe, when the art world truly became a world, as stated by Stallabrass.
The emergence of a global art movement is witnessed by the explosion of
art biennials around the world in the last two decades, the international
success of artists from Asia, Africa and South-America, and the emergence
of new art scenes outside the USA, Europe and Japan (Stallabrass, 2009).
Though the expansion of ‘global art’ has been extensively discussed
among art professionals and academics, the phenomenon of globalization
in contemporary art is still at an early stage of understanding (Elkins, 2011;
Harris, 2011). Many have argued that the globalization of art offers more
access for multicultural art, artists and audiences from all over the globe,
but at the same time it has reinforced contemporary art as meeting place
for a privileged and specialized audience (Harris, 2011). Does the rise of exhibitions,
art projects and biennials in non-Western regions break down the
barrier for new audiences, or could they be cynically regarded as exotic playgrounds
for a Western kerosene hogging art jet-set? I agree with Quemin
who states that globalizing effects like cultural relativism and deterritorialization
tend to be overestimated with regard to contemporary art: artistic
events have dispersed globally, but the international art scene remains
largely dominated by artists from the world’s wealthiest nations: the U.S.A.,
Germany, the U.K. and Switzerland. More artists from peripheral countries
are internationally recognized nowadays, although meanwhile many of
them have found residency in the West (Quemin, 2006). The contemporary
art world has become truly globalized in the last twenty years, but the
Western world still functions as its main gatekeeper.
Another challenge for art theorists is that globalization implies
“the creation of a single system within the world” (Harris, 2011, p. 9), whereas
it seems to shatter the image of a singular art world and art history into
multiple art worlds and art histories. A global perspective on art is hindered
by the lack of a universal concept or criterion of what has to be regarded as
art (Belting, 2009). ‘Global art’ is a confusing catch-all label under which traditionally
separated fields like international Western art, regional or ethnic
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art, and popular art coexist in hybrid and partly overlapping networks.
These networks can also be described in various forms: as a global market
controlled by galleries, art fairs and investors; as a biennial and museum
network that is ruled by curators; or as an international ‘creative industry’
which includes the commissions by companies and governments.
Traditional art history with its Western interpretative methods and terms
seems to be an inadequate tool to describe and analyze the current movement
of globalization and contemporary art. Both Elkins and Harris advocate
the development of an interdisciplinary research approach, in which
existing academic disciplines and analytic traditions must converge in order
to explore art from a global perspective, and to revise and rethink art history
along the way. A recent example that underlines the call for interdisciplinary
research is dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012, the influential exhibition that takes
contemporary art’s temperature every five years. At dOCUMENTA (13), visual
artists shared the list of participants with activists, scientists and theorists
from many fields. Artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev argues that
there is an urgent need for a “worldly alliance” of cognitive laborers from
every discipline, including artists (Schambelan, 2012). She points out that
her curatorial choices reflect her doubts regarding the continuation of art
as a well-defined field in the near future.
Papastergiadis (2011) argued that the artistic collaborative practice
which emerged after 1989, including the curatorial and academic discourse
that accompanies it, should be interpreted as the first truly global movement
in art. The question whether a contemporary ‘global art’ really exists
and how we will define contemporary art in the future still needs to be
answered, but the rise of socially engaged, collaborative art is unmistakable
and can be seen as a response to the changed social conditions of the globalized
society like the neo-liberalization of work, education, welfare & culture,
and the emphasis on individualism, consumerism and mediated
interactivity (Papastergiadis, 2011; Rodenbeck, 2011). I will therefore continue
with the exploration of socially engaged collaborative art, leaving the question
of the extent to which this is ‘the next thing’ to future research.
In the next section I will explore further the implications of globalization
from a sociological viewpoint. This will provide more insight in the
themes and ideological debates that fuel the context of contemporary social
and collaborative art practices.
The liquid world metaphor as artistic fuel
To describe the societal implications of the globalization process after 1989
in a broader perspective I will use the theories of sociologist Zygmunt
Bauman, who has commented extensively on the cultural transformations
that encroach in the slipstream of globalization. Bauman is appropriate for
this study because his writing represents one of the many voices within sociology
that criticize the social effects of globalization, which have inspired
the contemporary art field. Bauman’s philosophical and inductive style,
and the lack of empirical proof for his theories have been criticized in the
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sociological field (Lee, 2011). Davis (2008, p. 1234) emphasizes that Bauman’s
‘liquid sociology’ bears more resemblance to ‘sociology as art’ than to
‘sociology as science’ because its purpose is not so much a search for
answers as it is a proposition of questions that require further reflection.
These critical notions may explain why Bauman’s theories are so popular
in the field of art, because his provocative metaphor of post-cold war global
culture addresses the questions that many contemporary artists and curators
discuss and explore. The mission of contemporary art is to “fill in the
cracks in the social bond” according to curator Bourriaud (2002, p. 36) and
Bauman is one of the theorists who reveals those cracks in a provocative and
inviting manner.
Bauman (2005) describes globalization as the transformation of the
modern world from a solid to a liquid phase. ‘Liquid’ refers to a society that
is under constant change, where social structures melt more quickly than
new ones can be formed. Individualization, privatization, deregulation, digitalization
and consumerism are important features of the global society in
which horizontal networks have replaced vertical structures (Bauman, 2011).
He argues that non-engagement and distance have become the chief strategies
of power, which are reflected in the overwhelming influence of global
market economics on local societies. The mutual separation of power and
politics he describes is illustrated by the late-2000s financial crises in the US
and Europe, which prove that administrators have trouble controlling economic
forces.
To Bauman, the role of culture in a liquid modern world is not to
enlighten and ennoble people, but to seduce them. Contemporary culture
consists of offers and propositions instead of prohibitions or norms. Its
function is not to satisfy needs, but to constantly create new ones: “Culture
likens itself today to one of the departments of a world which has been
fashioned into a gigantic department store experienced by people who have
been turned into consumers first and foremost” (Bauman, 2011, p. 16).
Bauman draws a picture of a society in which culture is almost a synonym for
fashion - a social code that requires individuals to continuously renegotiate
and change their identity. The typical global citizen is turning into a cultural
omnivore, who mixes a large number of distinctive tastes or activities: from
highbrow art to lowbrow mass popular culture. Cultural elitism still exists,
according to Bauman, but has taken the form of a persistent denial of elitism.
The cultural omnivore feels “at home in every cultural milieu, without
considering any as a home, let alone the only home” (Bauman, 2011, p. 14).
This statement needs some nuance, because empirical research has shown
that primarily people in the higher social strata have shifted towards becoming
cultural omnivores, while individuals in the lower social strata largely
stick to popular forms of culture (Chan & Goldthorpe, 2005). Bauman’s ‘horizontal’
enjoyment of culture and art is further exemplified by Barrico, who
draws a parallel between the present understanding of culture and the use
of the internet: culture is experienced as a series of different events that
together form a sequence, like a string of hyperlinks. We enjoy culture not
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by studying one form in depth, but by navigating and surfing the surface of
an ocean of possibilities and events (Barrico, 2006/ 2006/2014).
It is no surprise that Bauman takes the chameleon as a role model
for liquid world citizens (2011). The chameleon is an omnivore in a continuous
state of transition that can adept itself to ever changing circumstances
and surroundings. These adaptive qualities are also key features in a marketdriven
globalized economy that has accelerated and stimulated worldwide
migration. Migration statistics show a substantial increase of global migration
after 1989 and a correlation with the trends and movements of global
economic processes (OECD, 2011). In 2011, over 215 million people lived outside
their country of birth (Ratha, Mohapatra, & Silwal, 2011), a number that
is still growing. Migration is the key force of rapid urbanization, resulting in
cities that are developing towards a state of “super diversity”, as stated by
Vertovec (2011, p. 8). Various groups of students, entrepreneurs, asylum
seekers, refugees, temporary workers and uniting family members become
long or short term citizens of cosmopolitan areas. Cities like Amsterdam,
London, Sydney, Moscow, Toronto, New York, Beijing and Dubai host over
150 different nationalities. The multicultural relations in such metropolises
develop increasingly horizontally instead of vertically.
Bauman argues that in a horizontally organized liquid modern
world no culture can claim dominance over another anymore, based on
superiority or progressiveness. Immigrants have to accept a position among
other ‘ethnic minorities’, whereas natives have to prepare themselves for
lifetime surrounded by diasporas. He describes this situation poetically as a
“multicultural cacophony” in which no single melody can be sung in unison
and people have no other option than to sing their individual choice of
melody (2011, p. 49). Bauman’s liquid modern world is not only a 24-hour
shopping mall but also an international airport where people swarm in
different directions and where groups with different ethnic, religious and
linguistic backgrounds are continuously formed and reformed.
An individualized, commercialized and deregulated society yearns
for new modes of collectivism and social engagement. Social theorists
Hardt and Negri (2000, 2004) have noted that autonomous, collaborative
creative forces can counter the neoliberal networks of power, and many
contemporary artists seem responsive to that call. “Art no longer wants
to respond to the excess of commodities and signs, but to a lack of connections”,
as philosopher Rancière puts it (2006, p. 90). Contemporary art is
(re)discovering its potential as a political and social platform. In the next
section I will explore the impact of societies’ ‘liquidization’ on contemporary
art practices.
Art at the service of life
The work of contemporary artists and theorists reflects the themes that are
addressed by Bauman and other neo-Marxist thinkers like Hardt & Negri
and Rancière. Curator Maria Lind (2007) states that in times when politics
are increasingly dominated by capitalist logic, art functions as a venue for
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ideological debate. Art theorist Grant Kester sees a unique place for art to
counter a world in which “we are reduced to an atomized pseudocommunity
of consumers, our sensibilities dulled by spectacle and repetition”
(Kester in: Bishop, 2006, p. 179). This results in “dematerialized, antimarket,
politically engaged art projects” by artists who have “turned to social collaboration
as an extension of their conceptual or sculptural practice” like
Francis Alÿs and Thomas Hirschhorn (Bishop, 2006, p. 179). A few years earlier,
Bourriaud had identified that relationships between people, communities,
individuals, groups, and social networks, as expressed in the work of
artists such as Vanessa Beecroft, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique
Gonzalez-Forster, Gabriel Orozco and Rikrit Tiravanija, were expressive of an
emerging practice within the international art scene (Papastergiadis, 2011).
Bourriaud’s previously quoted mission of the contemporary artist who must
“fill in the cracks in the social bond” may be a responsibility too large and
unrealistic. Nevertheless, there seems to be consensus among art theorists
that numerous contemporary artists understand their work as an articulation
of social conditions in a globalized community (Frieling, 2008).
Many sociologists have argued that globalization does not lead to
cultural diversification but to standardization or McDonaldisation, ruled
by vehicles of a consumerism like global branding, mass media and pop
culture (Cohen, 2007; Ritzer, 2003). The urban cultural melting pots lack a
clear direction or social coherence, so the only structure that seems available
are the rules of the global market economy itself. Bourriaud argues
that only two contradictory cultural modes can resist the process of global
standardization. One mode is based on withdrawal from globalism into ethnic,
cultural or national identities, recognizable in the upsurge of various
local nationalistic, ethnocentric and fundamentalist movements in the
beginning of the 21st century. The other mode is creolization; a process that
is derived from Caribbean cultures, which built new identities through
collisions, exchanging and blending of different cultures. Creolization is
fundamentally different from the relativist multiculturalist paradigm
because participants blend elements of their original culture innovatively
into new varieties that supersede earlier forms (Cohen, 2007).
Bourriaud embraces creolization as strategy against the “twofold
threat of uniformity and mass culture and traditionalist, far-right, withdrawal”
(Bourriaud, 2009a). He paints the contemporary artist as the
prototype-traveller, mediating between local and global perspectives in an
ever ‘creolizating’ world, occupied with travellers. The metaphor of the artist
as a traveller should be interpreted in two manners. Artists travel the world
literally, creating meaningful connections between different communities.
The artist is also a traveller in a symbolic sense because his work is seen as
an expression of a journey, rather than a fixed object in space and time. The
creation of new pathways is more important than the materialized destiny
(Bourriaud, 2009a). Such practices are often research-based and develop
over a long time, varying from a few months to projects that are designed
to operate indefinitely: Pedro Reyes collected 1.527 firearms from Mexican
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residents and melted them into shovels which were used to plant trees in
different public spaces; Suzanne Lacy organized a public group discussion
among two hundred teenagers in cars on a rooftop garage in California,
based on weekly meetings over a period of five months; The Atlas Group collected,
archived and presented texts and audiovisual material of Lebanon‘s
contemporary history from 1989 until 2004; and Rirkrit Tiravanija has
cooked and served food for exhibition visitors at various locations from
1990 until the present day.
The field of contemporary art defines itself increasingly as a
platform for social intervention and political debate. Artworks appear as
reports, manifestations or artifacts of the creative and communicative
processes in which artists engage, around real-world issues like labor, sustainability,
war, digitalization, gentrification, immigration, gender, race
etcetera. The discourse around these artworks is not distinct from it, but
constitutes and frames visual practice (Frieling, 2008). Artists are expanding
their artistic scope from critical distance to “critical proximity” (Cruz, 2012,
p. 60). Their practices are to be found in art institutes, but also directly in
communities and areas that are not associated with art. The autonomous
role of the artist merges with various other roles like activist, researcher,
teacher and entrepreneur. Curator Charles Esche sees a role for contemporary
artists to investigate new models of social and cultural behavior in the
form of “modest proposals”, which are largely speculative, yet concrete and
actual. Such artists “[…] avoid the clearly fantastical as well as the hermetic
purity of private symbolism in order to deal with real existing conditions
and what might be necessary in order to change them” (Esche, 2005). In this
view, art is understood as an experimental activity that overlaps with the
world (Bishop, 2012c), instead of as an activity that withdraws audiences
from daily life into fantasy or abstraction. Bourriaud notes that contemporary
art is increasingly fulfilling the role of bringing information about the
world around us. Film once informed audiences about what goes on in the
world, but the film industry seems to regard the real world mainly as source
of settings and plots (Bourriaud, 2009b). The research-based projects, installations,
documentaries and websites by contemporary artists function as
critical reports into global processes and local interventions. Popular media
are moving from the real toward the fantastic and the symbolic, whereas art
is moving in the opposite direction.
The advent of a ‘social turn’ in contemporary art is also signified by
the increasing interest of artists and curators in education and pedagogy.
Art projects appropriate both educational forms and methods and may
appear as seminars, libraries, workshops, manuals, and even as schools and
academies (Bishop, 2012a; Finkelpearl, 2013). As education is process-based by
nature and involves social interaction between participants and teachers, it
seems consistent that contemporary artists are dealing with it. Artworks can
become schools and schools can become artworks. Amalgams of art and pedagogy
are not unprecedented in recent art history, but these ‘schools’ were
often organized around one artist as a central pedagogic figure, like Joseph
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Beuys or Tim Rollins. In contemporary educational art projects artists tend
to position themselves more as initiators and organizers who connect locations,
participants and field specialists (Bishop, 2012a). The emergence of this
‘pedagogical turn’ can also be interpreted as an artistic and activist response
to neoliberal policies that treat education as an economic, rather than as an
emancipatory instrument (Rogoff, 2008). These educational policies are also
directly related to the practices of artists and art theorists themselves, as
many of them teach at art academies and universities.
The rapprochement of art towards real life situations and communities
recalls artist Allan Kaprow’s appeal for ‘lifelike art’, which he considered
to be opposite to ‘artlike art’. “[…] There is art at the service of art and
art at the service of life. The maker of artlike art tends to be a specialist; the
maker of lifelike art, a generalist” (Kaprow, 1983, p. 1). Kaprow explains artlike
art as a closed conversation between professionals and he calls for art forms
that seek dialogue in broad terrains with multiple audiences. Artist Suzanne
Lacy (2006), a former student of Kaprow, recognizes the impact of his ideas
among contemporary artists, who understand their work more as interdisciplinary
processes of meaning-making interaction than as the production of
‘works’ in specialized media. Many contemporary practices are defined by
the themes that artists address, much less by the medium that they use. Art
may indeed have reached Rosalind Krauss’ post-medium condition, in which
hybrid artistic presentations like multimedia installations and interdisciplinary
works surpass traditional genres like painting and sculpture (Krauss,
1999). Artists are more generalists than specialists, they vary genre, method
and form dependent on the domains and problems in which they engage.
According to Bourriaud, the post-medium approach offers opportunities to
break with the predisposition to exclude certain fields from the realm of art
(2009b). The interdisciplinary territories that artists engage with require
interdisciplinary modes of communication and expression.
The contemporary developments in socially engaged art can be
recapitulated as follows: the practice of these artists is conceptually rooted
in art, but located in social-cultural contexts associated with activism and policy
formation. Practitioners investigate new social and cultural models by relating
local experiences to global processes in an art practice that can be typified
as process-based rather than object-based. I can illustrate the above-mentioned
characteristics of socially engaged art with the art initiative Time/Bank (figure 12).
Time/Bank was initiated in 2010 by Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle
and is built on the principle that groups of people can exchange time and
skills instead of money. The project presents a parallel economic model by
using a time-based currency, the Hour Note. People can offer their services in
exchange for Hour Notes, which can then be used to buy other peoples’ services.
A central website functions as a ‘dealing room’ where services are
offered and sold. Besides its online community Time/Bank is also developing
an offline network with local branches in different cities. In 2012, Time/Bank
had nine temporary branches in art institutions based in cities such as
Moscow, Sydney, Berlin, New York and The Hague. A temporary exhibition
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Figure 12: Time/Bank (Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle), presentation on dOCUMENTA (13), (© 2012,
David Gómez Fontanills, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)
of Time/Bank in Frankfurt am Main in 2011 involved a presentation of artist
designs for Hour Notes, a bank counter, a printing machine, an archive of
German ‘Notgeld’ (which emerged after 1923’s hyperinflation), and a Time/
Shop with various articles and artworks.
Time/Bank can be seen as a contemporary version of the time banking
activities that began in utopian communities in the 19th century.
American anarchist Josiah Warren ran the Cincinnati Time Store from 1827 to
1830, in which for example one hour of labor could be exchanged for twelve
pounds of corn (Scharrer, 2012). Vidokle describes Time/Bank as an “immediate
visualization of an alternative economy” responding to the trouble that
people in contemporary society have imagining unconventional solutions
(2012). Time/Bank clearly breathes the air of conceptual art, but the artists
emphasize the need to take the project beyond the intellectual thought
experiment and offer people real experiences with an alternative economy.
Esche’s ‘modest proposal’ can be recognized in Time/Bank because it not only
imagines another world, it also creates another reality. It is a critical comment
on a global economic system and simultaneously a functional pilot for
an alternative. The fact that Time/Bank is presented in the realm of contemporary
art lends it its ambiguity between real life and artistic experience.
Now that I have briefly outlined the ideological context from which
contemporary socially engaged art practices have emerged, I will further
analyze their collaborative aspects. This sheds more light on the motivations
of contemporary artists to use collaborative artistic strategies, and the different
uses and interpretation of the phrase ‘collaboration’.
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Collaboration as an artistic strategy
Contemporary artists address real social issues through their work by
seeking collaborative connections either with local communities, with
other artists, with specialists from other disciplines, or with audiences.
Lind states that “collaboration is without a doubt a central method in
contemporary art today” (Lind, 2009, p. 53). She recognizes artistic collaboration
as an increasingly established working method between artists
and curators, and between artists and others. Lind acknowledges that
collaboration and participation are not new phenomenon in art. She
considers the contemporary emerging collaborative practices during the
last two decades as a collaborative wave, following the wave of collective
art that was produced around the 1960s by artists and collectives like
Abramovic/Ulay, Fluxus and Allan Kaprow. Lind (2009) emphasises that
tendencies towards collaboration seem to mark crucial shifts in art history;
they played an important role in the transition from modernism to
post modernism and the current social collaborative turn can be seen as
the root of art’s current globalized redefinition.
Lind points out the relationships between emerging collaborative
art practices and social global developments. There is a desire for activism
within the contemporary field of art, shaped in a cooperative blend of
new technology, art and political protest. She draws a parallel between
such artists and emerging anti-globalization movements that are reacting
against issues like corporate ownership, political questions of justice, and
the global political impact of international corporations on the environment
and employment. These artists and collectives are often autonomous
and self-organized, at some distance from the commercially and
publicly financed art markets. Their art can be found in public and commercial
institutions, but they often operate in the form of autonomous,
self organized initiatives: ”It is easier to practice strategic separatism
when you are a part of a group rather than left on your own” (Lind, 2009,
p. 67). She argues that the strategic separatism from the institutionalized
or commercial art world by artist collectives is both a sign of protection
and an act of protest.
Lind recognizes another influence on collaborative practices in the
way work is organized according to the post-Fordist work paradigm that
typifies present-day society. A society that is built on post-Fordism (or
Toyotism in reference to the ‘holistic’ car production methods at Toyota)
entails an emphasis on immaterial labor and a shift from material to immaterial
goods. Hardt and Negri (2009) describe the urban metropolis as the
metaphorical factory of the network age. Competences around affective
relationships, communication, language, and flexibility have gained importance
in post-Fordist professional communities (Gielen, 2010). Workers and
producers must be prepared to work under insecure short-term contracts,
which require creativity and the flexibility to alternate independent, selfmotivated
work with group and teamwork. All of these characteristics are
clearly mirrored and represented in the cooperative practices of
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contemporary artists (Lind, 2007). The (romantic) image of the artist as an
individual and unworldly creator seems to be outdated once and for all in
the neo- liberal network age. Several theorists have even claimed that artists
are model employees of the new neoliberal work ethic, because successful
careers in both the arts and economics require similar mind-sets and competences
(Florida, 2002; Gielen & De Bruyne, 2009; Rutten, 2004). Artists are
enterprising, flexible, self-managing, innovative and out-of-the-box thinkers.
However, this image of contemporary artists as the ideal all-round employee
of the 21st century seems just as one-dimensional and romantic as the image
of the socially isolated artist-savant.
Lind acknowledges the paradox that typifies the current collaborative
engaged art practices. Artists often react against the institutions and
mechanisms that rule present day society, but their self-organization and
cooperative working methods are interpreted as a sign of that same globalized,
post-Fordist society. That same ambivalence marks the relationship
that critical artists have with the institutionalized commercial art world:
their activities can be seen as a self-organized parallel ‘neo-separatist’ movement
that is at continuous risk of being incorporated by the same art circuit
that it is operating against. Collaborative, socially engaged artists like Rikrit
Tiravanija, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Francis Alÿs have reached the status of
art superstar in recent years, and are just as much part of the international
art economics illustrated through large solo-exhibitions and glossy catalogues
as other artists. Artists who undermine society’s power institutes are
simultaneously dependent on them.
In 1978, Adorno pointed out that creators of culture who withdraw
from the processes of administration lose the connection between art and
society. Anyone who wants to question, expose, or in the long run, change
the world, has to be heard and seen by its managers (Adorno, 1991). But
where artists in the twentieth century had to be careful not to be ignored
by the authorities, the artist in the globalized era has to be careful not to
get appropriated by or absorbed into corporate ideology. As artist and
writer Hito Steyerl writes: “The example of the artist as creative polymath
now serves as a role model (or excuse) to legitimate the universalization
of professional dilettantism and overexertion in order to save money on
specialized labor” (2011, p. 06/11). The similarities between collaborative
methodologies in art and corporatist networking ideologies are disquieting
because in that process art’s instrumental capacities are overemphasized,
at the loss of its autonomy. Collaborative social artists want to connect with
daily life, but they do not want to dissolve into societies’ daily routines and
efficiency management (Steyerl, 2011). Lind is nonetheless convinced that
there is a current tendency towards a growing separation between ‘difficult’,
discursive process-based art and ‘mainstream’ commercially viable art that
is increasingly becoming part of the entertainment industry (2009). The
collaborative aspect of socially engaged contemporary art might fit the
neo-liberal agenda, but its conceptual, process-based form prevents it from
becoming absorbed by the entertainment industry.
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Roberts (2009) found that contemporary artists use varied collective modes
with regard to the artist’s motivation, the way participants are approached
and the results they produce. Lind argues for the use of “collaboration” as an
umbrella term for a wide array of artistic working methods that involve
more than one participant. Collaboration is an open term that can include
“cooperation” (working together); “collective action” (acting together);
“interaction” (people interacting with others, with objects or with devices);
and “participation” (taking part in someone else’s work) (Lind, 2009). Kester
adds to this view by underlining the counter-meaning of “collaboration” in
the sense of betrayal or cooperation with the enemy. In Kester’s view this
negative connotation is appropriate because collaborative artistic practices
address political, social and ethical questions in ambivalent ways.
Collaborative works may be built on harmony, optimism and activism just
as well as on discomfort, provocation and fear. The contradictory meaning
of “collaboration” provides space for art practices and audience relationships
that are much too complex and diffuse to be labeled as ‘community
art’ or ‘political activism’.
I briefly characterized contemporary socially engaged art as
a process-based, conceptual practice that is rooted in art and located in
political and activist contexts, in which practitioners relate local experiences
to global processes. On the basis of my analysis of literature related to
collaboration in contemporary art, I can add an additional aspect to these
characteristics: artists are part of an interactive, collaborative practice. Socially
engaged artists understand art production as an interactive process that
includes varied forms of collaboration with different partners, including
the audience. I can illustrate the complex meaning of collaboration in
socially engaged art projects with When Faith Moves Mountains (2002) a
local intervention that has been extensively discussed in the field of
contemporary art (figure 13).
Francis Alÿs’ When Faith Moves Mountains (2002) is a video documented
performance that was executed in the sand dunes of Ventanilla, an
impoverished shantytown near Lima in Peru. Five hundred volunteers, all
dressed in white and armed with shovels, displace a gigantic sand dune by
nearly four inches. The diggers work in unison, side by side, forming a long
horizontal line across the sand dune.
This relatively simple intervention can be interpreted from many
angles. It can be seen as a poetic image, “… a powerful allegory, a metaphor
for human will, and an occasion for a story to be told and potentially passed
on endlessly..”, as noted on the Guggenheim museum website (2012). The
performance can also be interpreted as a symbolic form of communal activism,
taking place in an area when citizens were suffering from dictatorship
and riots between rivaling political groups at that time. Alÿs comments:
“It was a desperate situation and I felt that it called for an epic response,
a ‘beau geste’ at once futile and heroic, absurd and urgent” (2002, p. 146).
Another possible angle is formulated by Kester, who connects this work with
the themes of failure and futility that run through previous performances
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Figure 13: Francis Alÿs - When Faith Moves Mountains (© 2002, Francis Alÿs)
by Alÿs in Latin American countries: in Rehearsal 1 (1999-2003) an aged
Volkswagen tries unsuccessfully to climb a hill in Tijuana, and in Barrenderos
(2004) sweepers push garbage through the streets of Mexico city until they
have gathered so much litter that they cannot move any further. He interprets
these performances as symbolic comments on the inefficient economy and
wasted labor in Latin America, which, in the end, benefit the rich Northern
countries (Kester, 2011, p. 79). It is clear that collaboration and participation
form the heart of When Faith…. because the performance could not have been
executed without the joint sisyphus’ labour that is carried out by volunteers.
The power of the work lies in its ambivalent message: is it an allegory for hope
and momentary proof of the collective local community power, or does it
underline the impotence to change social differences?
Don’t hate the media, become the media
The emergence of socially engaged and collaborative aspects in contemporary
art is recognized primarily through the practices of contemporary artists who
show their work in art institutes and at biennials. This excludes the artists who
present their work in other contexts, like so-called ‘media artists’. Visual artists
who engage in the social implications of globalized media use, who use digital
media and the Internet as important platforms for collaboration, are thus
ignored in this discourse. Bishop explains that the sphere of new media art is
often understood as a specialized field, which rarely overlaps with the mainstream
art world (Bishop, 2012b). Below, I will show that the development of
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contemporary media art practices runs parallel to the ‘social collaborative
turn’ and I therefore argue that they should be included in this discourse.
Collaborative and socially engaged practices are also to be found
among art collectives and networks who consider media technologies and
the Web as their ‘natural habitat’. If there is one area in which the concepts
of globalization, mobility and networking have become tangible, it is in digital
technologies and online networks. Artists like Critical Art Ensemble, The
Yes Men, Adbusters, Jodi, F.A.T. Lab and Übermorgen use strategies like data
mining (data pattern analysis), hacking and remixing as forms of artistic
media-activism. Holmes describes contemporary media art practices as do-ityourself
geopolitics: “The appropriation of expressive tools from the information
economy -from the schools, the training programs, the workplace, and
the practices of consumption- opens up an enormous field of possibility,
where artists, alongside other social groups, can regain the use of political
freedom” (Holmes, 2007, pp. 290-291). The discourse around these media art
practices often takes place outside the contemporary art institutes and biennials,
but is frequently found in media art institutes, media festivals and
among media theorists. The multifaceted parallel art worlds described earlier,
become visible again here.
So-called ‘media artists’ often share the characteristics of other collective
socially engaged art practices, with the only difference being that
audiovisual technology forms their main artistic medium and/or their main
source of inspiration. Media artists tap into the global discourses on propaganda,
marketing, intellectual property and censorship by appropriating
information systems and popular imagery. Musician and activist Jello
Biafra’s famous quote “don’t hate the media, become the media” (2001) can
be seen as a motto for numerous media art practices. These artists often
‘hack’ into the system of public media by experimental use of audiovisual
media and the creation of alternate strategies and networks.
The collaborative artistic strategies that Lind and Papastergiadis
cum suis describe are perhaps even more prevalent in the practices of new
media artists, than among ‘ordinary’ artists. First, interdisciplinary cooperation
is inherent to the use of digital technology as primary artistic media.
Manovich argues that computers can be seen as a metamedium in which
techniques like cinematography, animation, photography and graphic
design are extracted from their original contexts and merged into hybrid
visual languages. The logic behind those hybrid languages is coined ‘deep
remixability’ by Manovich. The remix is ‘deep’ because the content, methods
and languages of different media are not simply added together; they result
in new forms and interdisciplinary practices in which the original techniques
have been blurred and altered (Manovich, 2006). The practice of
media artists reflects the logic of deep remixability because their work
arises in interdisciplinary contexts and forms, often with assistance from
specialists with various technical backgrounds. Second, if one computer
generates the urge for interdisciplinary collaboration as a metamedium,
this effect is multiplied endlessly when several computers are connected in
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global networks. A connected computer is not only a magic toolbox but also
a social device. Collaboration and participation have become the buzzwords
of the interconnected media era, especially after the rise of Web 2.0 after
2004, which allowed amateurs to produce, remix and share digital content
on a global scale (Jenkins, 2006a; Lessig, 2008; Manovich, 2008). The social
and interactive aspects of digital media are also visible in the practices of
media artists. Many of them use digital networks to create independent
open platforms that offer easy access and direct interaction with their
audience and other professionals. The rise of social networks has certainly
contributed to all art practices, but media artists in particular have developed
strategies to connect to audiences beyond traditional art institutions.
Media theorist Charles Leadbeater emphasizes that the web encourages the
role for art as a platform for relationships and social interaction. In his view,
‘separate and shock’ was the main principle of the avant-garde in the 20th
century, whereas ‘combine and connect’ is the main principle for the avantgarde
of the internet era (Leadbeater, 2009).
The practices of media artists that I have discussed demonstrate
that developments with regard to digitalization and global interconnectivity
offer artists new possibilities to collaboratively produce and distribute
socially engaged art, often outside the traditional art circuits. The practices
of socially engaged media artists can be seen as an articulation of the
‘post-medium approach’ (Krauss, 1999) in contemporary art that I discussed
previously. This enables me to add another aspect to my characterization of
contemporary socially engaged art: interdisciplinary production results in
various forms of work. The way ‘media & technology artists’ employ interdisciplinary,
collaborative artworks via independent platforms is exemplified by
the Free Universal Construction Kit (figure 14).
Figure 14: F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab - Free Universal Construction Kit (© 2012, F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab,
used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License)
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The Free Universal Construction Kit by F.A.T.-Lab and Sy-Lab (2012) is a collection
of nearly 80 building blocks that enable interconnectivity between
different popular children’s construction toys. Each brick can connect at
least two different brands of building blocks: a piece of Lego can be joined
with a piece of K’Nex, or Fischertechnik can be connected with a Bristle
Block. F.A.T.-Lab and Sy-Lab do not distribute physical bricks; they provide
free downloadable files for 3D printers. Anyone who wants the Free Universal
Construction Kit can download the files and print the blocks for personal use.
The artists claim that “… the Kit encourages totally new forms of intercourse
between otherwise closed systems - enabling radically hybrid constructive
play, the creation of previously impossible designs, and ultimately, more
creative opportunities for kids” (F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab, 2012). The Free
Universal Construction Kit as an art project addresses different themes. The
work can be perceived as a concrete solution to a physical problem that
every kid is familiar with. The Kit is in that sense a brilliant and useful idea
that allows children to ‘remix’ their physical toys. This interpretation can
scarcely be isolated from a more critical meaning of the work as a conceptual
artwork that criticizes the strategies of commercial companies.
F.A.T.-Lab and Sy-Lab provide an insight into how companies force consumers
into ‘brand-loyalty’ at an early stage of their lives. From the moment
they are born, kids start following the particular consumer patterns that are
incorporated in their favorite ‘mono-compatible’ toys. A third perspective is
related to the collaborative and process-based aspects of this project. Like
Time/Bank, the Free Universal Construction Kit can be seen as a ‘modest
proposal’ that not only imagines but also creates other realities. Anyone
can join to print the bricks or to design new adaptors that can be added to
the Kit. The Free Universal Construction Kit is an open-ended, interdisciplinary
experiment that allows artists, technicians and amateurs to jointly share
and remix physical objects through the Internet and to reflect on its possible
implications for a society that is built on globalized mass production.
Media artists address other aspects of globalization and use different
collaborative methods, but their goal to intervene in local/global issues
through social interaction (both on- and offline) resembles the agenda of
other contemporary artists. Social engagement and collaborative strategies
are to be found among a much broader array of visual art forms than those
that are displayed in art institutes and at biennials.
I have explored the ‘social collaborative turn’ from different angles
and artistic fields, but the criticism that has been expressed regarding
this development has not yet been discussed. Below, I will briefly discuss
two critiques that address the importance of the aesthetic quality and the
participatory limitations for socially engaged collaborative art.
Criticism
Collaborative socially engaged practices in contemporary art are not
without criticism. First, art critic Claire Bishop (2004) points out that the
“laboratory paradigm” in art, promoted by curators like Bourriaud, Kester
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and Lind resembles the principles of the experience economy in which
goods and services are replaced with personal experiences. However, what
the viewer should harvest from such experiences often remains unclear:
“There can be no failed, unsuccessful, unresolved, or boring works of collaborative
art because all are equally essential to the task of strengthening the
social bond” (Bishop, 2006, p. 180). Bishop is supportive of the social ambitions
of such art projects, but stresses the importance of both social effects
and artistic quality. Collaborative art practices should not be valued just by
ethical judgments on working procedures and the intentions of the artist.
The ideal social collaborative art practice should not limit itself to inflexible
modes of political correctness. Art should not only invite, but also offend or
reject. For Bishop, discomfort, frustration, doubt and pleasure are crucial
elements of a work’s aesthetic social impact -along with consensus and compromise.
She quotes Rancière in stating that “[…] the aesthetic doesn’t need
to be sacrificed at the altar of social change […]” (Bishop, 2006, p. 183).
Second, Charles Leadbeater adds that collaborative art should not
simply mimic the collaborate practices of successful Internet companies
like Google and Facebook: “If the point of art is to provide the setting for
conversation then Starbucks could claim to be the world’s leading art
business” (Leadbeater, 2009, p. 12). Good art comes from many sources,
collaboration is just one of them, argues Leadbeater. He urges artists to
address to the various roles that their public takes, based upon his studies
on the Internet and contemporary culture. Leadbeater distinguishes three
types of experiences when people engage with media and culture: a passive
mode (Enjoy), a limited participatory mode (Talk) and a creative/collaborative
mode (Do). He stresses that although the culture of the World Wide Web
has shifted the mix of these modes from Enjoy to Do, this does not imply
that every spectator wants to become a creative Do-er. Only a small percentage
of art visitors want to participate, and they do not want it all the time.
Internet statistics show that collaboration originates around a small core
group of Do-ers who take the lion’s share of the work. If art organizations
want to engage audiences to become contributors, they have to offer them
a wide range of potential roles. Artists have to test “the limits of collaboration
rather than simply celebrating it” (Leadbeater, 2009, p. 26).
Third, Pablo Helguera (2011) has criticized the socially engaged art
practices that claim to be aimed at real transformation, whereas they were
merely symbolic. He criticizes the artists and curators who assign weighty
instrumental social effects to art projects that are only meaningful for art
experts, a point that was recently also made by Hartog Jager (2014). Helguera
sees the upsurge of a ‘social aesthetic’ that suggests dialogue and change,
without the desire to actually realize those goals. Helguera, an artist and
educator, specifically addresses the artists and curators who describe their
practices as ‘pedagogical’, but who are not attentive to learning outcomes:
“[…] you’re completely home free if you do this conceptual project of
a school that doesn’t teach anybody and where nobody learns anything,
but it looks really great in the press release” (Helguera in: Reed, 2012).
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The critiques of Bishop, Leadbeater and Helguera signify that socially
engaged art practices operate in a diffuse area between art and life. This
position is both significant and difficult. It is significant because it enables
art practitioners to research and redefine the position of art in contemporary
society. It is difficult because it challenges artists to take ambiguous
positions: between artistic and social processes; between aesthetics and
functionality; between collective and individual authorship; and between
intrinsic and instrumental values. The best socially engaged art practices
appear to be the ones that succeed in maintaining an indefinite state that
resonates between these dichotomies.
Conclusion
My overview of theories and critiques provides general characteristics
of contemporary socially engaged art practices. Based upon the writings
of Bishop, Bourriaud, Frieling, Holmes, Kester, Lind, and Papastergiadis,
I formulated five general characteristics of such art practices:
1. The art practice is conceptually rooted in art, but located in socialcultural
contexts associated with activism and policy formation. Artists do not
shun working under the category of art, but they use art and art institutes
as experimental open platforms for creative exchange around social themes.
Existing local/global conditions often form the core of their work, instead
of fantastic imagery or private symbolism.
2. Artists relate local experiences to global processes. Artists identify
local civic issues and needs in perspective with broader debates and global
themes. The position taken by the artist is often that of the mediator
between global and local networks of communication.
3. The art practice is process-based instead of object-based. Artists are
context providers rather than content providers. Their work takes the form
of a proposal, an invitation or an intervention rather than a fixed solution.
The public dialogue and experience around art processes is considered most
valuable, and the work of art functions as an intermediary object in that
trajectory. Different forms of process based-documentation, communicated
through various media, play an important role in the artistic production.
The discourse around the artistic practice is not distinct from it, but constitutes
and frames visual practice.
4. Artists are part of an interactive, collaborative practice. Artists cooperate
with other artists, and/or with professionals from other fields, and/or
with their audience/amateurs in collectives or networks with flexible memberships.
The public is not only a witness but is often actively involved in a
dialogue around the process and presentation of the artwork. The public is
seen as a partner rather than as an audience.
5. Interdisciplinary production results in various forms of work. Art production
and presentation is not just visual but aural, textual and tactile as
well. Experts, amateurs and audiences from different (arts) disciplines are
invited to participate in creative processes. The interaction that takes place
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through collaboration enables different art and non-art disciplines to meet
and cross-pollinate each other.
This literature study indicates that the discourse around socially engaged
art practice is often supported by idealistic and theoretical debates, rather
than by empirical data. To validate and explore the characteristics that I
defined above, I will continue my investigation into socially engaged practice
in the form of an empirical study on the practices of contemporary
artists. The results of that investigation and my final definition of contemporary
socially engaged art practices will be discussed in the next chapter.
Together, the literature review and the empirical study of socially engaged
art practice enable me to formulate characteristics of contemporary professional
visual production, which enables me to answer the research question:
how does artistic development and learning take place among contemporary
artists and what are their sources of inspiration?
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5
Nine Socially
Engaged Art
Practices
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The aim of chapters 4 and 5 is to define the major characteristics of
socially engaged contemporary art practices so as to inform a model
for authentic art education. Ford and Forman (2006) and Gardner
(Gardner, 1999, 2008) have argued that schools tend to give little
attention to the fundamental aspects of a discipline and the particular
roles that practitioners play within these disciplines. Students
should not only learn about the subject matter and vocabulary of a
discipline, but they should also experience how a specific discipline
‘works’. This empirical study investigates additional reference points
for authentic learning contexts, which enable students to practice
the essential roles of the discipline (e.g. artist, curator, critic) and
allows them to experience the difference between personal and professional
perspectives. In chapter 4, I defined these art practices on
the basis of a literature review. In this chapter, the literature-based
characteristics are validated and further explored on the basis of
nine present-day practices of artists and art collectives.
Chapter 4 was based on literature study and provided me with overall
insight into the societal and artistic backgrounds of contemporary socially
engaged artistic practices. That chapter resulted in a theoretical framework
of five general characteristics of socially engaged art, which I regard as the
core elements of a working definition:
1 .
The art practice is conceptually rooted in art, but located in cultural
contexts associated with activism and policy formation;
2. Artists relate local experiences to global processes;
3. The art practice is process-based instead of object-based;
4. Artists are part of an interactive, collaborative practice;
5. Interdisciplinary production results in various forms of work.
Because the characteristics of the working definition are quite rough and
derived from literature, I want to verify and explore them further through
an empirical study among contemporary artists and art collectives. There
are four arguments that underline the desirability of additional empirical
research into socially engaged art practices:
First, since my working definition is based on characteristics that
were mainly derived from the arts, philosophy and sociology, the learning
perspective on art practices has not been fully explored. Because this
research project is aimed at developing an educational model, basic modes
of knowledge production are an important aspect. An additional empirical
study offers possibilities to explore what types of knowledge artists learn
and what learning strategies they use in their communities of practice in
depth.
Second, although the theorists studied have unmistakably based
their writings on research among contemporary artists, the voices of individual
artists have often been integrated in larger theoretical frameworks.
The theoretical exploration of social art has received more attention than its
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empirical foundation (Helguera, 2011). Many of the texts that I analyzed are
written or influenced by curators who can be typified as author curators,
like Nicolas Bourriaud, Okwui Enwezor, Charles Esche and Maria Lind. Their
practices go beyond the traditional subservient curatorial role, towards an
innovative practice in which the curator operates as an independent, visionary
cultural producer. Critics of the author curator argue that in such
practices the curatorial concept might be celebrated as the central artwork,
rendering singular artworks and artists as illustration material that demonstrates
the curator’s thesis (Baldessari, 2003; Vidokle, 2010). I therefore
believe that it is important to include the voices of contemporary artists in
this study as a means to verify and explore the definition of socially engaged
contemporary art from a practitioner’s perspective, in addition to the perspective
of researchers, curators and art critics.
Third, for the sake of argument theorists tend to use those art practices
and examples that illustrate their theoretical viewpoints best. This
leads to an overexposure of some artists, who become the unwitting icons of
certain movements in art. That seems to be the case with artists like Santiago
Sierra, Francis Alÿs, Thomas Hirschhorn, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Suzanne Lacy
who are featured prominently throughout many of the writings about
social engagement and collaboration in contemporary art. To avoid even the
semblance of parochialism I want to verify the theoretical notions regarding
socially engaged art practices by focusing on contemporary artists who have
not yet been canonized in this theoretical discourse.
Finally, a majority of the artists in the studied literature are prominent
in that segment of the art world that is presented via biennials, art
institutions and museums. I also want to verify the theory in an expanded
field, to investigate the range and width of socially engaged art practices
beyond the scope of avant-garde art institutions and their audiences. The
fields of media art and applied art seem to be increasingly interwoven with
contemporary autonomous art, but they are not prominent in most socially
engaged art studies. However, I already explained in the preceding chapter
that so called ‘media artists’ should be included in this discourse because
their practices are socially engaged and collaborative almost by default. The
second type of practice I want to incorporate are those art practices which
have connections with the domain of the applied arts. Recent empirical
studies have identified that a majority of art practices in the post-industrial
era can be typified as plural; either pluriactive or hybrid. Bureau, Perrenoud
and Shapiro consider an art practice as pluriactive when an artist alternates
between autonomous and applied art forms (2009). When applied and
autonomous forms are treated as equivalent and blurring aspects of the
same practice, it is categorized as hybrid (Van Winkel, Gielen, & Zwaan, 2012).
‘Hybrid’ artists understand the fusion of the autonomous and the applied
(or of art and non-art) as a positive process that contributes to their artistic
identity or profile. Van Winkel et. al. found that although many contemporary
artists separate applied from autonomous work, their mixed practice is
increasingly deployed in hybrid societal contexts or value systems (2012).
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Many contributors to the discourse around socially engaged art have
addressed hybrid connections between art and non-art, but much less
was said about how artists operate simultaneously in autonomous and
commercial or semi-commercial art contexts. My empirical study can shed
new light on the relations between artistic autonomy and applied work in
contemporary art.
In my view, then, an empirical study among contemporary artists is
necessary to complete the definition of contemporary socially engaged art
practices. Additional empirical data are needed to validate and explore the
working definition that was based on a literature review. This information
will be retrieved through interviews with contemporary artists who have
not been canonized in a theoretical discourse, some of them having a practice
in the related fields of applied art and/or in media art. The working definition
will be explored with regard to the learning and teaching aspects in
the practices of these artists, which were lacking from the studied literature.
Together, the literature study and empirical research inform the final definition
of contemporary socially engaged art practices, which can then be compared
to art education settings.
Research questions and methodology
The aim of this chapter is to validate and further explore the working definition
of socially engaged art practices through the analysis of empirical data
collected among contemporary international artists. This enables me to
answer the research question: how does artistic development and learning take
place among contemporary artists and what are their sources of inspiration? To
realize this goal, I formulated three supporting research questions for this
empirical research:
1. Is the working definition of socially engaged art validated by the
practices of nine different contemporary artists and art collectives?
2. How can the working definition be explored with regard to the
educational aspects of the practices of nine different contemporary
artists and art collectives?
3. How can the working definition of socially engaged art practices be
verified or further explored in an expanded field, specifically among
media art practices and applied art practices?
Research typology
The general characteristics of socially engaged art practices that were formulated
in a working definition provide a framework that will be used to
select international art practices. To align the working definition with the
characteristics of informal visual networks that were developed in 2 and 3,
Wenger’s communities of practice-model (2006a), will also be used to
structure this study: the five characteristics of socially engaged artistic practices
have to be reordered into the sections of the communities of practice
model. This leads up to a working definition that allows me to analyze and
refine these characteristics with the empirical data introduced in this
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chapter. Table 5 shows the combination of the five characteristics with the
community of practice model.
Because my aim is to validate and explore the working definition
and work towards a substantive theory (Saunders, Lewis, Thornhill, &
Verckens, 2008), the research typology can be characterized as both deductive
and inductive (Baarda, de Goede, & Teunissen, 2005). The deductive
aspect of the study entails that the working definition functions as a theoretical
template that is empirically verified with new data, retrieved from
real life settings. Aspects of the working definition that are confirmed by
the empirical data are considered to be valid; aspects that are falsified by
the empirical data need to be reconsidered or revised. The inductive aspect
of this study entails that the aspects of the working definition need to be
further refined and developed with data from a broader field, leading up to
a final definition. Here, the working definition acts as a sensitizing concept
(Bowen, 2006) that enables the discovery of additional aspects in the data
that can enrich and refine the working definition.
The Communities of Practice model (Wenger, 2006a) is used as a
supporting theoretical template with two functions. First, the model offers
support for the inductive process of defining new or refined characteristics
that are relevant in educational contexts. The second function of the CoP
model is that it offers a meta-structure for the final definition of socially
engaged art practices as a professional community, enabling it to be compared
with informal and formal learning communities.
Research design
The empirical study is designed as a qualitative survey among nine contemporary
artists and art collectives. Each of the cases consists of a semi-structured
topic interview with an artist or a collective member and is supported
with contextual data from field documents like art catalogues, art journals
and artists’ websites. A qualitative survey is in place because it provides
opportunities for detailed and in-depth understanding of personal perspectives
and responses to the complex systems, experiences and processes
(Ritchie & Lewis, 2003). The goal of this investigation is to validate that individual
artist practices can be considered as representatives of a larger group
Domain: shared concerns, interests and competences
– Artists relate local experiences to global processes.
– Their practice is conceptually rooted in art, but located in cultural contexts associated
with activism and policy formation.
Community: joint activities, information sharing, peer learning
– Artists are part of an interactive, collaborative practice.
Practice: production of a shared repertoire of resources
– The art practice is process-based instead of object-based.
– Interdisciplinary production results in various forms of work.
Table 5: Working definition: literature-based characteristics of socially engaged art practices integrated
in the communities of practice model.
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or movement in contemporary art and to discover new aspects of this practice.
Therefore, supporting field documents are important because they add
contextual value to the survey, allowing a much broader analysis, similar to
a ‘compact version’ of a multiple case study. This qualitative survey with
support from field documents reinforces both data deduction through verification
of theory in practice, and it supports data induction because new
variations within socially engaged art practices can be discovered to complement
the emergent theory.
Sampling method and generalizability
The central unit of analysis in this empirical study is formed by the socially
engaged practices of nine contemporary artists and art collectives. The
practices are selected through a method which Patton has described as
theory-based sampling (1990). Theory based sampling is a form of purposive,
criterion-based sampling in which “the researcher samples incidents, slices
of life, time periods, or people on the basis of their potential manifestation
or representation of important theoretical constructs” (Patton, 1990, p. 177).
The sample is based on a priori theoretical definitions that are representative
of the phenomenon of interest.
Theory-based sampling should not be confused with theoretical
sampling (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), which is associated with grounded theory
and a case study method. Theoretical sampling entails sampling as a cyclical
process that starts with an initial sample or case that is analyzed, after which
a next sample is taken in order to refine the emerging theory. This process is
continued until the point of data saturation is reached (Coyne, 1997; Ritchie
& Lewis, 2003). In this study, the term theory-based sampling is correct
because the selection is based on an a priori theoretical working definition,
but the process of selection, data collection and analysis is successive - not
cyclical as in theoretical sampling. Multiple artist practices are chosen in
such a manner that they can fill and replicate the conceptual categories, but
that are also able to extend the emergent definition. The selected practices
have to be comparable and must also allow stratification on the basis of
characteristics that have not been theoretically explored sufficiently.
As a first step in the sampling process, I transformed the working
definition into selection criteria (table 6). I formulated three different categories
of criteria: formal criteria, criteria for validation, and criteria for both
validation and theoretical exploration.
I designed general formal criteria (a) to ensure the comparability
of the different practices. As I am specifically researching the practices in the
professional art domain, I operationalized ‘professional’ into three criteria:
the practice must be full-time, the artists have received professional art education
and their work is exhibited in professional art institutes. I do not
intend to disqualify part-time, self-educated or undiscovered artists, but for
the sake of mutual comparability they were ruled out in this study.
The criteria for validation (b) are necessary to select those artists’
practices that have not been ‘incorporated’ in the discourse around socially
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engaged art and to ensure that both an international and local perspective
are represented in this study. I operationalized the criterion that addresses
the local and global practices of artists as follows: to validate the global
characteristic it is important that the majority of the selected artists have
art shows, residencies and publications in multiple countries. To prevent a
Western bias, I also want to include artists whose practice is located in a non-
Western country. Because I also want to test the local characteristics, I have
chosen to include practices of artists who all reside in the same local region.
The city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands was chosen because it is an urban
area with a strong local identity and lot of artistic activity, located outside
Amsterdam, the international Dutch ‘art hub’.
The criteria that allow validation and theoretical exploration (c) are
necessary to select those artists’ practices with a potential to validate and/or
explore the emerging definition. The criteria c1 (socio-cultural contexts),
c2 (collaboration) and c3 (interdisciplinarity) are derived from the working
definition. The criteria c4 (art/media practices) and c5 (art/design practices)
are used to test the working definition in adjacent or expanded areas and
a Formal criteria b Criteria for validation c Criteria for validation and
theoretical exploration
a1 Artists operate in
a full-time practice
a2 Artists have
received professional
art education
a3 The artist’s work is
shown in acknowledged
art institutes
b1 Artists are not prominent in
the theoretical discourse
around socially engaged art
b2 Artists operate on a global
and local level:
– Some of the practices
should be situated in a
non-western country;
– At least three practices
should be located in the
city of Rotterdam, the
Netherlands
c1 The art practice is assumed to
address socio-cultural contexts
c2 Artists have some sort of
collaboration with others
(collective work, on- or offline
audience participation)
c3 Artists use diverse techniques
and materials
c4 Audiovisual and/or digital
media play a prominent role in
the work, both as a source of
inspiration and as a creative
material with which the work is
made and/or shown
c5 Artists are active in a
pluriactive or hybrid art
practice, consisting of both
autonomous and applied work
Table 6: Criteria for theory-based sampling based on the working definition of socially engaged art practices
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to diversify the study with practices that were absent from the theoretical
discourse. The criteria c4 and c5 offer variations within the unit of analysis,
which do not have to be met by all of the selected practices.
Selection process
Two different strategies were used to select the nine practices in this study.
The artists with a foreign background were pre-selected on the basis of three
recent publications about contemporary art: The Ungovernables (Joo, 2012),
Art & Agenda (Klanten, Hübner, Bieber, Alonzo, & Jansen, 2011) and Living as
Form (Thompson, 2012). The Dutch artists who reside in Rotterdam were
selected via snowball sampling (Atkinson & Flint, 2001).
The Ungovernables (Joo, 2012) is the title of the catalogue that
accompanies the second triennial exhibition with the same title in the New
Museum in New York. The Ungovernables exhibits the works of thirty-four
artists and collectives born in the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The artists
and collectives are residents of twenty different countries and many of them
had never before exhibited in the USA. Curator Eungie Joo describes The
Ungovernables as “an exhibition that acknowledges its failure to fully represent
a generation in formation and instead embraces the energy of that generation’s
urgencies” (Joo, 2012, p. 15). Although the exhibition title suggest
that the selected artists are hard to categorize, the catalogue makes it clear
that all the selected artists share an interest in the economical, geopolitical,
technological and social practices that shaped recent history (Joo, 2012). The
socially engaged theme of the exhibition and the relatively young age of its
participants form the main reasons to pre-select these artists for this study.
I sent out e-mails to five artists and collectives that participated in the exhibition.
Three of them confirmed that they would cooperate in this research
project: Pilvi Takala (Finland/Turkey), The Propeller Group (Vietnam/USA) and
José Antonio Vega Macotela (Mexico/the Netherlands). The collective Public
Movement (Germany) and artist Hassan Khan (Egypt) did not respond.
Art & Agenda (Klanten et al., 2011) presents a collection of work by
contemporary artists and texts on the themes of political art and activism.
The book features established artists like Marina Abramovic, Ai Wei Wei and
Maurizio Cattelan, but also contains many younger artists and collectives.
The reason why I chose this book during the selection process is that Art &
Agenda is one of the few publications in which socially engaged contemporary
art is defined very broadly, presenting the work of fine artists, street
artists and media artists side by side. As I wanted to include media artists
in this study, I chose to pre-select five international media artists from
Art & Agenda. The art collectives 0100101110101101.org (Italy/USA), Voina Group
(Russia) and Übermorgen.com (Austria) did not respond or were not able to
participate. Aram Bartholl (Germany) and Evan Roth (France), who have
individual practices and are members of the activist artists collective F.A.T
Lab, did agree to participate in this study.
Living as Form (Thompson, 2012) features a thematic collection
of essays and art projects addressing socially engaged art from 1991-2011.
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I chose this book for selection purposes because it offers an international
overview of over a hundred socially engaged art practices including many
artists and collectives that are relatively unknown in this discourse. ‘Usual
suspects’ in socially engaged art, like Francis Alÿs, Suzanne Lacy and
WochenKlausur, are presented in alphabetical order next to upcoming
artists and projects that are usually not understood as art like The Pirate
Bay and the Egyptian Tahrir Square. As I had selected already many artists
at that time, I chose to select only one practice from Living as Form: the Sao
Paulo based art and design collective Grupo BijaRi agreed to participate in
this study.
The practices in Rotterdam were selected through snowball sampling,
in collaboration with my research assistant Sanne Versteeg. We found
practices through discussion sessions and via our personal networks of colleagues,
curators and students. If artists were not able to participate, they
could sometimes refer us to other artists in the Rotterdam area. Artists
Sophie Krier and Esther van de Wiel and the Atelier van Lieshout and
Lastplak collectives did not respond or could not participate. Jeanne van
Heeswijk and the Wandschappen and The Authentic Boys collectives agreed
to participate in this study.
Characteristics of the selected practices
The final selection for this study consists of nine contemporary artists and
collectives. To gain more insight in the match between criteria and the practices
I have created a table (table 7). I will explain the characteristics of the
selected practices below.
The entire selection meets the criteria in category a, which entails
that it consists of professional artistic practices. The criteria in category b1
were met by all of the selected practices, except one. Some of the selected artists
are mentioned in literature about socially engaged art but only Jeanne
van Heeswijk’s work has been regularly discussed as exemplary in this discourse
(BAVO, 2009; Bishop, 2006, 2012a; Thompson, 2012). Nevertheless,
I chose to select her in this study because her practice can function as a critical
case (Miles & Huberman, 1994), which exemplifies the main findings and
offers opportunities for comparison with the other practices. When van
Heeswijk’s practice is regarded as the empirical prototype of socially engaged
art, the other eight practices can contribute to the deductive and inductive
process with characteristics that either confirm or deviate from the prototype.
All of the practices operate on an international scale with exhibitions,
residencies and publications in multiple countries (b2). The practices are
located in ten different cities in nine countries, divided over four continents:
Europe (6), Asia (2), North America (2) and South America (1). Three practices
are based in multiple countries; one solo artist and two art collectives. The
ratio between non-Western and Western residencies is 4 - 7, including the
artists and collectives with a double residency. Four practices are (partly)
located in the Netherlands; one in Amsterdam and three in Rotterdam.
The criteria in the c category were designed to allow validation/ replication
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b Criteria for validation
c Criteria for validation and theoretical exploration
Authentic
Boys
Grupo
BijaRi
Aram
Bartholl /
F.A.T Lab
Jeanne
van
Heeswijk
The
Propeller
Group
b1
Not in the
theoretical
discourse
√
√
√
√
b2
Practice
location
Rotterdam,
Netherlands,
Geneva,
Switzerland,
Berlin,
Germany
Sao Paulo,
Brazil
Berlin,
Germany
Rotterdam,
The
Netherlands
Ho Chi
Minh City,
Vietnam,
Los Angeles,
USA
c1
Artists
address
socio-cultural
contexts.
Tensions
between the
designed and
the ‘real’ world
Local public
space
Tensions
between the
digital and
the real world
Local public
space
Local politics,
propaganda
c2
Collective
work/audience
participation
Art collective
with four artists,
participation
of local
communities
Art Collective
with 15 artists,
participation
of local
communities
Audience
participation,
online collective
practice with
± 25 artists
Collective
practice
with local
communities
Art/design
collective with
three artists
c3
Practice in
which various
(art) disciplines
are integrated.
Performance,
video,
photography,
installations
Audiovisual
design,
performance,
sculpture,
photography,
video
Video,
photography,
programming,
sculpture
Architecture,
design,
public sculpture,
installations
Video,
advertising,
graffiti,
sculpture,
photography
c4
media/
art
practice
√
√
√
c5
art/
design
practice
√
√
Evan
Roth/
F.A.T Lab
√
Paris,
France
Tensions
between the
digital and
the real world
Audience
participation,
online collective
practice with
25 artists
Programming,
video,
programming,
sculpture,
graffiti
√
Pilvi
Takala
José
Antonio
Vega
Macotela
Wandschappen
√
√
√
Istanbul,
Turkey
Mexico City,
Mexico
Rotterdam,
The
Netherlands
Codes of
behavior of
various social
groups
Codes of
behavior of
various social
groups
Local
communities
Participation
of local
communities
Participation
of local
communities
Collective work
with two artists,
participation
of local
communities
Table 7: Match between criteria in category b and c with the selected practices
Performance,
interventions,
video,
installations
Archives,
drawing,
painting,
sculpture,
photography,
installations
Industrial
Design, graphic
design, textiles,
drawing,
sculpture,
video
√
√
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of the working definition of socially engaged art practices. All of the selected
artists have practices in which an application in various socio-cultural contexts
can be assumed (c1). The featured artists and collectives have practices
in which social groups, societal issues and political themes are prominent.
Collaboration (c2) is an aspect that is set to play a role in all of the practices.
Four practices consist of artists who produce their work primarily as a collective.
In the other five practices it can be assumed that artists collaborate
regularly with different participants; either artists or non-artists, online or
offline. All of the selected artists have a practice with multi- or interdisciplinary
aspects (c3); different media and techniques are combined or integrated
and may vary from project to project.
Five out of nine practices meet criterion c4, which allows theoretical
generalizations about audiovisual-orientated practices within the field
of socially engaged art. In two practices, audiovisual/digital media are
merely used as a tool (Grupo BijaRi, Takala), in three practices audiovisual or
digital media function both as a tool and as a source of inspiration (Bartholl,
The Propeller Group and Roth). Criterion c5 is met by three practices. This
stratum entails a selection of combined autonomous and design practices
within the context of socially engaged art. The collectives BijaRi and The
Propeller Group combine an audiovisual design practice with an autonomous
art practice, Wandschappen alternate commercial product design
with various artworks and projects.
Practice descriptions
To provide context for the data analysis in this chapter I will briefly describe
each of the participating artists and collectives. Each description includes
biographical information and the description of an art project that is
regarded illustrative of that practice.
Authentic Boys
Film maker Boris van Hoof (1979, lives in Rotterdam) is a member of the
Authentic Boys collective, together with the performers Gregory Stauffer
(Geneva) and Johannes Dullin (Berlin) and film maker Aaike Stuart (Berlin).
Their practice is situated on the intersection of visual art, film and performance
and includes short films, performances, happenings, video installations,
and photographs. The Authentic Boys experiment with themes and
images that are derived from everyday life. Their intuitive approach goodhumoredly
elucidates the friction between ‘authentic’ and ‘real’ moments
in our direct surroundings.
Authentic Boys’ project Rehearsing Revolution (2012) was executed
with over 500 secondary school students over a period of two months at the
TENT art space in Rotterdam. Rehearsing Revolution was a series of 100
minute, interactive performances in which students were semi-scientifically
tested for their ‘revolutionary potential’. The pupils were challenged to rebel
against their personal limits and habits through questionnaires, playful exercises
and the production of a personal ‘revolution outfit’. The photographic
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Figure 15: Authentic Boys
- Rehearsing Revolution
(© 2012, Authentic Boys)
portraits of the participants, which were taken during the performances, are
presented as autonomous work by the Authentic Boys (Authentic Boys, 2013).
Aram Bartholl
Aram Bartholl (1972, lives in Berlin) works as a visual artist and is a member
of the Internet-based F.A.T. Lab collective. In his public interventions, installations,
web art and video’s, Bartholl explores questions on the influence of
the digital world on everyday life – and vice versa. Recurrent themes in his
work are the tensions between concepts like online/offline, public/private
and original/copy. His work is often accompanied by forms of online or
offline audience interaction through workshops, DIY manuals and interactive
installations.
Dead Drops (2010) is Bartholl’s offline version of a peer-to-peer filesharing
network, which have become popular on the Internet for software,
films and music exchange. The work consists of several USB flash drives that
Figure 16: Aram Bartholl
- Dead Drops
(© 2010, Aram Bartholl)
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have been embedded in the walls and buildings in public spaces. Passers-by
can connect their laptop to the flash drive and upload or download the content
they prefer. The only file that is installed on the original flash drive is a
text file with an explanation of the project. The website deaddrops.com contains
information about the location of the different dead drops and DIY
instructions that allow visitors to create their own dead drops (Bartholl, 2012).
BijaRi
Eduardo Fernandes (1974) is a member of Grupo BijaRi, an art and design
collective in São Paulo, which he formed in 1996 with five other architects
and artists: Geandre Tomazone, Gustavo Godoy, Maurício Brandão, Olavo
Ekman, and Rodrigo Araújo. Currently, BijaRi has around fifteen members,
who alternate design-based and art-based projects. The collective operates
mostly in the urban area of São Paulo and for Brazil-based clients. BijaRi
has also executed large-scale art projects outside Brazil during residencies
in Colombia, Costa Rica, The USA, and France. Urban life, local politics and
spatial critique are recurrent topics in the practice of BijaRi. Their artistic
strategies include video mapping, graphic design, performance and installation
art.
BijaRi’s project Recounting on Us (2011) took place at Comuna 1 in
Medellin, Colombia, an area occupied by guerilla refugees and former residents
of the gentrified areas of central Medellin. On the basis of interviews
with the residents BijaRi researched the tensions between the local community
and the many social and cultural facilities that have been invested in this
area as a result of public security policies. The results of this research process
were presented through written quotes, painted on large pieces of cloth
on the rooftops of houses in Comuna 1. Users of the futuristic metro-cable
transport system hovering over Comuna 1, can read all the texts, which form
a narrative of personal histories, conflicts and wishes (BijaRi, 2012).
Figure 17: BijaRi
- Recounting On Us
(© 2011, Grupo BijaRi)
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Jeanne van Heeswijk
Jeanne van Heeswijk (1965, lives in Rotterdam) is a visual artist who creates
and remodels cultural prototypes for public space, mostly through different
modes of collaborative and participatory production. She addresses themes
relating to public space like urban renewal and participatory, bottom-up
cultural production through large scale collaborative projects involving different
collaborations with citizens, artists, designers and local governments.
Her projects are often longitudinal, lasting from a couple of weeks to several
months or years. Van Heeswijk produces ‘interspaces’ and has coined the
term ‘urban curating’ for her public interventions. She understands herself
as an intermediate between different locations, local problems and communities
(Westen, 2003).
Freehouse: radicalizing the local (2008 - ongoing) is a project in the
Afrikaanderwijk, a multicultural neighborhood in transition in the south
of Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Freehouse is an intervention in the
Afrikaander market, one of the largest public bazaars in the Netherlands.
Together with architect Dennis Kaspori, Van Heeswijk has initiated new
services and products for the Afrikaander market, collaborating with local
entrepreneurs, citizens, market salesmen, designers and artists. Freehouse
is an ongoing project that has resulted in the launch of new local products,
workshops, fashion shows, performances and designs for vending carts and
market stalls (Van Heeswijk, 2012).
Figure 18: Jeanne van Heeswijk - Freehouse: Radicalizing the Local. Presentation at A City
Shaped, Stuk, Leuven (© 2013, Jeanne van Heeswijk)
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José Antonio Vega Macotela
Exchange is the most important topic of research in the artistic practice of
José Antonio Vega Macotela (1980, lives in Mexico City). His work explores
the way exchange influences and shapes human interaction, visualized
through objects and artefacts that epitomize various informal systems of
exchange. His installations may include a wide range of objects, drawings,
video’s and readymades, but they usually share a reflection on forms of
human exchange in the different communities and milieus in which the
artists has submerged himself. Vega Macotela’s art projects are usually
research-based and longitudinal, allowing the artist to engage with a
specific community, often located in Latin America.
Time Divisa (2006-2010) is the exchange project José Antonio Vega
Macotela created in collaboration with the male inmates of the overpopulated
Santa Martha Acatila prison in Mexico City. Over a period of four years,
Vega Macotela visited the prison weekly, encouraging the prisoners to participate
in a time exchange experiment. The artist offered to perform tasks
for the inmates outside the prison and in return they would have to complete
small assignments for Vega Macotela. The exchange should take place
at the exact same moment and the duration of the tasks should be equal.
Vega Macotela won the trust of the inmates and succeeded in completing
over 300 exchanges with them. This method enabled Vega Macotela to create
an alternative economic system beyond the prison walls, based on the
basic principle of ‘time for time’ (Messer, 2013). The documentation of the
exchanges; drawings, objects and found materials produced by the inmates,
form the core of the installation Time Divisa. Intercambio 55 (2006) shows
Figure 19: José Antonio Vega Macotela
- Intercambio 55. From: Time Divisa
(© 2006-2010, José Antonio Vega Macotela)
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a prisoner who Macotela asked to mark each scar on his body with an
explanation of its origins. In return Macotela simultaneously attended
the birthday of the inmate’s mother.
The Propeller Group
Phunam Thúk Hà (1974), Matt Lucero (1976) and Tuan Andrew Nguyen (1976)
founded The Propeller Group in 2006. The three members have backgrounds
in film, video and visual art, an expertise that is continuously being
expanded through cooperation with companies and other artists. With
headquarters in both Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) and in Los Angeles (USA),
The Propeller Group presents itself as a global multimedia company, but
most of their activities deploy in the field of contemporary art. The Propeller
Group locates itself in an intermediate place, refusing to position itself as
merely a media company nor as an autonomous art collective. This hybrid
‘corporate identity’ is also reflected in the works of The Propeller Group,
where the visual language of popular culture and advertising get intermingled
with complex ideas and discourses on politics and propaganda.
The title Television Commercial for Communism (2011) immediately
reveals the ideological incompatibility at the core of this art project. The
Propeller Group has translated its interest in political ideology and mass
media to an assignment for different advertising agencies to ‘re-brand’ communism:
“How will capitalism’s most influential by-product, the advertising
machine, process its former political opponent in a post Cold War context,
still saturated with Cold War idiosyncrasies?” (The Propeller Group, 2011).
The Propeller Group’s ambition is to create different advertising campaigns
that are communicated via cinema, TV, Internet and print. Vietnam’s TWBA,
who worked for Apple, Adidas and Nissan, is the first advertising agency that
made a proposal for a promotional campaign for communism. Television
Commercial for Communism is presented as a multimedia installation and is
Figure 20: The Propeller Group - Television Commercial for
Communism (© 2011, The Propeller Group)
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documented on the website www.everyoneisequal.com with background
information, recorded brainstorm sessions of TWBA staff and different
versions of the video commercial.
Evan Roth
Evan Roth (1978, lives in Paris) is an American artist who creates videos,
prints, sculptures and websites. His work is heavily influenced by developments
in communities and subcultures focused on graffiti, popular culture,
hiphop, online technology and hacking. Using a playful, often humoristic
style, Roth succeeds in addressing two different audiences at once. His work
has proved to be popular in the world of (media) art and has gained popularity
among wide audiences on the Internet. Roth’s work looks accessible
and lighthearted, but often addresses larger topics like corporate strategies,
politics and censorship in a technology-driven society. Roth is the co- founder
of the Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T. Lab), an online collective with
around 25 artists, engineers and hackers “who are dedicated to spreading
open source and free ideals into popular culture” (F.A.T. Lab, 2013).
The art project How To Build A Fake Google Street View Car (2010) was
designed and executed by Evan Roth and F.A.T. Lab fellows Aram Bartholl,
James Powderly, Randy Sarafan, Geraldine Juarez, Greg Leuch, Jamie
Wilkinson, Magnuss Eriksson and Tobias Leingruber, during the Transmediale
festival in Berlin. As a comment on Google’s influence, the artists
built a fake Google Street View car and filmed the public reactions it invoked
while driving through Berlin. Starting from the notion that Google is a company
that everybody seems to like, the artists choose to push the limits by
driving the car in a clumsy manner, asking for directions and suggesting
that the driver was drunk. Public reactions vary from ignorance to enthusiasm
and anger. The project was documented on an Internet page that also
features a downloadable manual, enabling others to build their own Google
Street View car (F.A.T. Lab, 2010).
Figure 21: F.A.T. Lab - How To Build A Fake Google Street View Car (© 2010, F.A.T. Lab)
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Pilvi Takala
Pilvi Takala (1981, lives in Istanbul) is a Finnish artist who explores the
hidden social rule systems in contemporary society. Her projects, videos,
installations and texts function as reports on immersive research projects
in which the artist purposely disturbs the codes of behavior in specific communities
and social contexts. For her work, Takala often immerses herself
anonymously in a community for some time, using hidden cameras and
other ‘spyware’ to document her actions. Takala’s interventions are subtle
but effective; by disturbing social patterns and routines she manages to
provoke reactions that reveal the social codes in public spaces, governmental
organizations and companies (Timmer, 2011).
The multi-media installation The Trainee (2008) is a report on a
month-long period during which Pilvi Takala worked as an apprentice in the
marketing department of finance company Deloitte. Takala provokes her
colleagues by sitting behind her desk all day with her hands in her lap, doing
what she calls “brain work”. Takala’s passive and openly unproductive behavior
slowly starts to irritate her colleagues, causing all sorts of reactions
directed at Takala, or at the management. Takala reveals the painful process
of becoming a social outcast within a community of office workers via hidden
camera films, pictures and e-mails. Where hidden forms of unproductiveness
(browsing Facebook, chatting) are generally tolerated in offices, the
image of a worker who does not show any visual activity disrupts the office
code, causing immediate reaction and irritation (Takala, 2008).
Figure 22: Pilvi Takala - The Trainee (© 2008, Pilvi Takala)
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Wandschappen
Ivo van den Baar (1965) and his wife Nicole Driessens together form
Wandschappen, a design and art collective located in the Charlois area in
Rotterdam. Driessens and Van der Baar design and produce furniture and
objects, they sell autonomous work in their Hommes gallery and they initiate
participatory art projects with citizens, artists, designers, local governments
and NGO’s. A connecting theme in the eclectic practice of
Wandschappen is the adaptation of traditional crafts and skills to new contexts.
All of Wandschappen’s works reflect a high degree of craftsmanship,
often inspired by Charlois’ local heritage and the ‘forgotten’ crafts of its
inhabitants. “The combination of craftsmen and artists leads to innovation”
states Van den Baar (Wandschappen, 2012). Wandschappen has co-initiated
DNA Charlois, an atelier and design-label that aims to explore the artistic
potential among the 160 different cultures in the Charlois neighborhood.
Feltplants (2009 - ongoing) is a series of monochrome plants in
pots made from 100% wool felt. The felt plants are typical of the domestic
plants traditionally grown on the window sills of Dutch apartments, like
sanseveria, bamboo and alocasia. Like house plants, these felt plants have
an intermediate status, somewhere between design, art and decoration.
The felt plants were inspired by Wandschappen’s observation that plants
on window sills are often the first signs of the arrival of new residents in
the neighborhood. These felt plants are a sculptural version of the ordinary
house plant, a symbol of human mobility and the need for domestication.
Figure 23: Wandschappen - Alocasia XL, black felt (© 2011, Wandschappen)
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Interviews
The interview topics were based on my working definition and Wenger’s
Communities of Practice-model. The latter provided a general structure
for the interviews and ensured a focus on the learning aspects to be found
in the artist practices. Two researchers executed the interviews with artists
of the nine selected practices between March and May 2012. Five artists
and collectives were interviewed online using videoconference software;
four artists were interviewed face-to-face in the Netherlands. All interviews
were voice-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Jeanne van Heeswijk, Boris
van Hoof (Authentic Boys) and Ivo van den Baar (Wandschappen) were
interviewed by Sanne Versteeg (master student Radboud University
Nijmegen) in Rotterdam. Pilvi Takala was interviewed by Emiel Heijnen in
Amsterdam. Five artists and collectives were interviewed by Emiel Heijnen
from the Netherlands using Skype: José Antonio Vega Macotela in Mexico
City, Aram Bartholl in Berlin, Evan Roth in Paris, Phunam, Matt Lucero
and Tuan Andrew Nguyen (The Propeller Group) in Saigon and Eduardo
Fernandes (Grupo BijaRi) in São Paulo. The quotes of Boris van Hoof
(Authentic Boys), Ivo van den Baar (Wandschappen), Educardo Fernandes
(BijaRi) and Phunam, Matt Lucero and Tuan Andrew Nguyen (The Propeller
Group) are mostly referenced with the name of their art collective. All the
other participants are referenced with their last names. Recent publications,
reviews and works of the interviewed artists are used to support the
analysis of the artistic practices.
Method of analysis, coding the data
The method applied for data analysis is best described by King (2004) as
template analysis. Template analysis is a method that was first described
by Crabtree and Miller as: “A common intermediate approach is when
some initial codes are refined and modified during the analysis process”
(1999, p. 167). King (2004) has argued that template analysis has methodological
resemblances to grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) in the
sense that data are coded during the analysis process, although in a less
prescriptive manner. Where grounded theory starts in principle with
data and ends with theory, template analysis usually departs from a theoretical
framework that is both validated and explored during the data
analysis phase: “the essence of template analysis is that the researcher
produces a list of codes (‘template’) representing themes identified in
their textual data. Some of these will usually be defined a priori, but they
will be modified and added to as the researcher reads and interprets the
texts” (King, 2004, p. 256). The initial template is commonly organized in
a hierarchical structure that represents the relationships between the
theoretical themes, similar to what is called axial coding in grounded
theory (Boeije, 2005).
The initial template that was created for this study is based on the
working definition that was introduced earlier (table 5). The initial theoretical
template is shown in figure 24.
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After the template was created, I assigned the initial codes to the codebook
in the qualitative analysis program HyperResearch, version 3.5.2. I used this
software throughout the entire analysis process, as a means to guide the
process and increase the reliability of the analysis.
As a next step, all the verbatim interview data were imported into
the HyperResearch project in which the code book was created. Then the
crucial phase commenced: a meticulous reading of the data and assigning
the codes to coherent fragments in the text. When a text fragment fitted
one of the codes in the template, this code was assigned to that fragment.
When a template code proved to be too general it was split in different
sub-codes. An example of this process is the initial code “political contexts”,
which could not differentiate between fragments that referred to
‘political resistance’ and those that referred to ‘political alliance’. As a
result, “political contexts” was divided into the codes: “activism” and
“policy formation”.
After this phase of deductive coding, a large amount of interview
fragments could be assigned with a code from the initial template. This is a
significant finding because it indicates that I can claim an empirical replication
of the working definition. The fragments that did not have a code were
re-analyzed in an inductive, open coding manner, resulting in additional
codes. After this step, a tiny fragment of data remained unlabeled. These
1 domain
local experiences/global processes
conceptual approach
political contexts
2 community/collaboration
collaboration with others
(peer) learning
(peer) teaching
3 practice
interdisciplinary production
process/product based
1 domain
real existing conditions
competences
– educational background
– shared competences
local experiences/global processes
conceptual approach
activism
policy formation
2 community/collaboration
collaboration with professionals
networking
collaboration as an artistic theme
critical feedback
collaborative learning during production
3 practice
practice origin
process/product based
– artistic form
– artistic method
interdisciplinary production
– inter media use
– Hybrid: social
– Hybrid: balance autonomous/applied
– income
Figure 24: Initial template, based on the theoretical
working definition
Figure 25: Revised and updated codebook after coding
all the data
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fragments were considered irrelevant for this study and were ignored in
the analysis process.
As a final step, the updated template codes and the newly defined
open codes were rearranged under the three main themes of the template,
and were placed in a logical order that could guide the writing process. The
final code tree that was finished after the labeling process is shown in figure
25. All of the quotes with the same code were exported from HyperResearch
and analyzed thematically, structured by the three main topics (domain,
community and practice) of the communities of practice model.
Analysis of the data
Domain: concerns, interests and competences
In this study I consider the practices of the selected artists and collectives
to be part of a larger community of practice (CoP) in contemporary art.
Wenger’s definition of a CoP can be summarized as a group of people who
share a concern for something they do, which is improved through regular
interaction (Wenger, 2006a). Wenger has stated that CoP’s are formed
around formal and informal activities, and he uses examples like “a tribe
learning to survive”, “a band of artists seeking new forms of expression” or
“a group of engineers working on similar problems” (Wenger, 2006a, p. 1).
The central community in this study is formed by professionals, unlike the
informal communities of fanartists and cosplayers that I studied in chapter
2 and 3. A shared domain of concerns, interests and competences defines
the identity of a CoP, whether it is formal or informal. First, I will discuss
the central source of inspiration that defines the domain of socially
engaged art practices and then I will present the other themes that form
important characteristics.
Artists relate local experiences to global processes.
One of the main findings of my theoretical exploration was that socially
engaged artists identify local civic issues and needs in the light of broader
debates and global themes. This characteristic is replicated in the data of
this empirical study: most of the artists mention that their artistic practice
is formed around contemporary societal themes, exemplified by real life
experiences and encounters with various communities: “My main goal is
to interrogate the public domain”, says Van Heeswijk in this respect. Other
artists have similar references to existing circumstances as a source to
explore larger themes, like an interest in “the banal reality” (Authentic Boys),
“social behavior” (Takala) or “current topics” (BijaRi). Reflection on existing
local and global developments in present-day society is a common interest
among the interviewed contemporary artists, instead of the fantastic,
abstraction or private symbolism (Bishop, 2012c; Esche, 2005).
The position of the artist as a mediator between local and global
networks of communication is reflected in the whereabouts of the artists.
All of the artists choose to work in the direct vicinity of different social
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contexts that inspire and fuel their work: “The time has gone that artists work
in isolation. I like to paint alone for a few days, but if that would be the only
thing it would drive me crazy” (Wandschappen). Such statements confirm
the view that artists have expanded their artistic scope from critical distance
to “critical proximity” (Cruz, 2012, p. 60). Their studios are not located in
secluded locations but in the centers of human interaction. The artist’s studio
is not a place for retreat, like a proverbial country house; it is symbolically
better represented as a city apartment, or maybe even better, as a
mobile home. Many of the artists operate like travelling ‘artistic anthropologists’
who blend into certain local communities for a certain amount of
time, during which they produce new work. Takala, for example, says: “I, on
purpose, try to go into new situations, in new places and I often do research
among different communities who share distinctly different rule systems
than others”. Evan Roth extends the scope of the artist-traveller to communities
that are manifest in the digital realm: “I am interested in this small
overlap where the art world intersects with the real world or the Internet
or the non-art world.” Wandschappen have chosen a slightly different
approach to travelling; their permanent studio is located in one of the most
dynamic and multicultural urban districts of the Netherlands: “We draw
from a well that has not been explored until now: all this knowledge from
all these countries. I don’t have to go anywhere - everything is already here.”
(Wandschappen). Whether artists physically wander the world or not, all of
the above approaches seem to verify Bourriaud’s image of the artist as a traveller
in a globalized world occupied by travellers (2009a). Artists like Takala
and Roth are constantly moving (either physically or on the internet) in
order to seek interaction with different communities, whereas collectives
like BijaRi and Wandschappen operate deliberately in the international
hubs, where travellers continuously pass through.
The artists describe a continuous process of oscillation between
real experiences and the larger systems that represent and influence the
human condition like visual culture, mass communication, economy, politics
and technology. General notions and ideas are connected to particular
locations or communities, and vice versa. Some artists zoom in on specific
local sites and communities in order to contribute to discourses around
local identity (Wandschappen,), urban development (Van Heeswijk, BijaRi),
economic systems (Macotela) and social codes (Takala). Artists like Bartholl,
Roth, Authentic Boys and The Propeller Group often problematize the relationship
between mediated realities and ‘real’ experiences:
There is a lot of development in television, film and advertising
and at a certain point we realized how much they determined
our experience in society. […] It has been important for us to
make work that engages on another social kind of level.
(The Propeller Group)
Contemporary art and art history have significant influence on their practice,
but all of the artists also draw inspiration from other wells: “My art is
not based in art history. I am not very specialized in art history, but I know
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the most important things” (Macotela). Or as Aram Bartholl puts it: “I don’t
have classic artistic examples I work from, or something”. Some of the artists
refer to specific theorists like Karl Marx, Hannah Ahrend and Suely Rolnik,
whereas others mention a big influence from popular culture sources like
graffiti, hacking, consumer electronics, videogames, films, blogs and
Youtube. The Propeller Group explains how such an eclectic mix of sources
is linked to a form of social engagement: “We are interested in public sculpture,
propaganda, pop culture, television, Internet. All these different kind
of areas and how they overlap, how they inform and maneuver around different
cultural groups around the world.”
When socially engaged artists are understood as artistic anthropologists,
it makes sense that they study theories and systems that extend
beyond the traditional realm of art: “All these different angles, these various
perspectives on human behavior, that is what interests me” (Authentic
Boys). “We contextualize and we recontextualize the system of representation”,
says Antonio Macotela in that respect. His statement reveals that the
parallel with the anthropologist does not hold in the end, because where
a researcher would merely analyze representational systems, artists often
actively manipulate these systems, changing, or emphasizing aspects of
their original meaning, which may influence the perception of the real
conditions that the artist addresses. Socially engaged artists are not only
commenting on or mirroring their subjects, they are also constructing new
‘realities’ at specific local sites.
To further validate and explore the shared concerns, interests and
competences of these artists I will investigate two themes: the balance
between a conceptual artistic approach and the affiliation with activism
and policy formation and main competences that these artists share.
Conceptually rooted in art, associated with activism and policy formation
Contemporary socially engaged artists are not only inspired by real life contexts
and current topics, but their artistic practices also aim to have an
impact in the real world. Charles Esche (2005) has described the art in such
practices as “modest proposals”; speculative projects that recontextualize
existing conditions and offer possibilities for change . The urge for artists to
have an impact in the real world is formulated by Evan Roth: “That idea of
art being able to sort of change everyday surroundings, I think is a big part
of why I make art”. This raises the question of how the interviewed artists
balance the goal to produce good art and the urgency to ‘change the world’.
Are socially engaged artists committed to art, or are they activists disguised
as artists?
All of the interviewed artists have distinct ideas about the role of
the artist in present-day society. When society is understood as a complex
social construction or rule system, then artists have the opportunity to
operate between or beyond the boundaries of that system. Operating
within the art domain offers them methods to examine or recontextualize
contemporary society in order to create distinctive sites for visualization,
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identification, reflection and engagement: “I think that the complexity of
societal issues requires a wider conceptual framework”, says Van Heeswijk.
Art could provide such framework. Takala, like Van Heeswijk, construes the
domain of the arts as a particular form of communication that adds value
to other domains in society:
There are many other things that are important in our society,
different communications that are more restricted, like education
and politics where you have certain codes about how things
should work. But in art we have this totally free format and it is
also a means of communication. It is really valuable, so I guess
this method of communication is at the root of why I make this
work. I can choose another format but this seems to me like the
tool to use.
Art is seen as a specific format or system through which the world can be
explored. Making ‘good’ art is the main goal for all of the artists, but this is
often accompanied with a belief that good art can contribute to instrumental
effects. Ivo van den Baar of Wandschappen states: “I always say that art
cannot resolve anything. […] I do not have the ambition to solve social
problems, but it would be beautiful if we could contribute something to
the solution.”
Van Heeswijk points out that her point of departure is based in the
arts, but that the art domain should not be regarded as an isolated field:
I never said that I wanted to leave the art world or the museum,
like other artists did. […]. I believe that besides the economical
and the political also the cultural is an important pillar of our society.
The collaboration between these three pillars is very important.
[…] You could say: making things visible is part of solving
the problem. I think that my work does solve a problem from time
to time, but that is not the main goal of my practice.
The interviewed artists underline that their work has to be primarily understood
as art; they are not social workers. Rather, art is seen as a domain that
can influence and seek connections with other societal domains, as opposed
to the view that art is an introspective domain. Roth: “This notion that there
is an other community of people out there, not just people holding the
wineglasses and the eating the cheese in the white cube. That had a big
influence on me.” None of the interviewed artists aims for work that is only
meaningful within the professional art domain: “The worst case is when
your only audience are the art professionals, that is really sad. […] Often
there is no effect or often people even don’t see the works. I accept that. But
when there is, when something happens there is true change, that is what I
like.” (Takala). These artists acknowledge that they operate in a domain that
is not always accessible for outsiders, but they do not want to confirm to the
notion that art only exists for art’s sake.
All of the interviewed artists are exploring art’s opportunities for
some sort of transformation. Some artists merely aim for forms of mental
transformation among the public. Takala: “I want to take part and I want to
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have people re-think. But I don’t have a political agenda behind my work.”
Macotela says that he has “this big crazy idea that it’s possible to change
the world”, but he emphasizes that art production is primarily an intellectual
endeavor:
If you are not able to give meaning to all these things that you
are doing, you are not an artist but an activist. And you can
change the world, which would be nice and incredible, but if you
cannot create meaning with this, it is useless for me as an artist.
(Macotela)
Some of the interviewed artists are more outspoken about the political
issues that they want to address through their work. The Authentic Boys are
continuously problematizing the contrast between the manipulated and
the real: “We want to make people realize they are being played with, that
you are not reacting as authentic to certain situations as you might think.”
Bartholl and Roth are concerned with the democratization of public media;
they want to contribute to discussions around issues like copyright and
open source developments. Aram Bartholl: “There is so much opportunity to
improve things with this whole development of open source and openness,
but instead of that it’s all patterns and it’s closed and it makes me sick.”
The practices of Wandschappen, Van Heeswijk and BijaRi could be
interpreted as aimed towards transformation. Eduardo Fernandes of BijaRi
sees their art practice as a form of immediate democracy in the urban area
of Sao Paulo: “Institutionalized politics that exists these days have nothing
to do with us. They just have disconnected from the real world. We are doing
other stuff: direct democracy, not this representative stupid stuff.” BijaRi’s
critique is aimed at local authorities, which are increasingly regulating and
privatizing public space in Sao Paulo. Wandschappen are critiquing laboroutsourcing
policies by hiring unemployed craftsmen among the local
immigrants in Rotterdam. Wandschappen: “The Netherlands could be one
of the most valuable low-wage countries in Europe. […] There are many
people who are unemployed because they do not speak the language and
their diploma is not valid. But these people do want to work with their
hands.” In Van Heeswijk’s project Freehouse (2008 - ongoing) local communities
are mobilized directly by inviting them to public ateliers where they
can combine their skills and produce new products that are shown and sold
at a weekly market: “More and more people feel left out in our present day
society, and have disconnected with the public domain […] My work or my
design attitude is all about trying to find ways to encourage or provoke
people to participate again in that public space (Van Heeswijk, 2010).
Whereas Wandschappen and Van Heeswijk often cooperate with local governments
and NGO’s, BijaRi’s art practice comes forward as the one that is
most anti-Establishment. More than the other interviewed artists, BijaRi’s
desire for transformation is converted into methods of confrontation and
activism. Interviewer: “When is a project successful?” Fernandes: “Usually
when we get problems with the police (laughing). We are very critical, we
always go for the jugular, you know.” The members of BijaRi might be the
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most straightforward political activist artists, but the interventions that the
group undertakes are still rooted in the desire to visualize the unseen, just
like most of the other practices: “Our goal is to identify a conflict, bring it
out of invisibility and to change the perception of the audience towards
that conflict” (BijaRi).
Many of the interviewed artists point out that the art domain offers
them opportunities to research unconventional forms of activism that
might be more effective than conventional ones. Pilvi Takala says in this
regard: “I don’t want to make it so obvious, because even true capitalists can
look at the work and maybe something changes in how they think. But if I
present them this like anti capitalist manifesto, they won’t even read it.”
Bartholl and Roth identify their art practice with that of the hacker. A hacker
is conceptually understood as someone who exploits an existing system for
something it was not intended to do, from the viewpoint of the original
creator (Roth, 2012). The position of the artists can be compared to that of
the hacker in the sense that they both find creative solutions by operating
‘out of the box’ of an existing system. Another similarity between the hacker
and artist is that they both understand their activities as a form of play with
existing conventions. This translates to playful forms of activism, recognizable
in the work that Bartholl and Roth produce with other members of
their collective F.A.T. Lab. Roth: “Part of our approach is a form of activism
that is different than just having a protest with clever signs on the street.
I was at this conference in Barcelona where they refer to this as ‘radical
entertainment’.” Boris van Hoof of Authentic Boys also refers to forms of
play as a form to engage the audience: “I like to take a very radical stance, for
instance ‘dictatorship is better’, to see what happens. It is healthy to take an
extreme stance now and then, just as a game, to see how far you can go.” Van
Heeswijk stresses that the esthetical domain from which artists operate is
not value-free and that it should contribute to the empowerment of inhabitants
as co-owners of public space: “Besides ethical considerations you need
esthetical considerations, so you have to be able to form images, which I
think are to be found in my domain, in the domain of the artist”. In her
essay ‘Inclusive Urban Strategies for Radicalizing the Local’ (2011), Van
Heeswijk quotes Richard Florida, who argues: “I strongly believe that the
key to improving the lot of underpaid, underemployed and disadvantaged
people lies not in social welfare programs or low-end make-work jobs […]
but rather in tapping into the creativity of these people” (2002, p. 10). Van
Heeswijk’s activism is radical; not in the sense of protest, but in the way she
investigates alternatives for political policies within the domain of art. That
urge for activism and policy formation is found throughout the interviews.
Artists do not only want to comment, they also want to empower their audiences
to experiment with alternative ideas and forms in society.
Shared competences
As I have argued previously, my study pays specific attention to the educational
background and the shared competences of socially engaged artists,
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as these aspects are rarely mentioned or studied in the social art discourse.
Empirical data about the expertise and skills that artists deploy in contemporary
art communities are valuable for the educational field because they
shed a light on what artists actually perceive as valuable and useful competences.
The data in this study show that the researched artists seem to use
and value different skills and expertise than those that are central in traditional
art curricula. I will now analyze and discuss these findings and add
them to the definition of socially engaged art practices.
Most of the artists in this study have received education at official
art schools or universities’ art departments. The majority of the artists
earned a bachelor or masters degree in visual art with various individual
emphases like autonomous art, sculpture, textile, photography, audiovisual
art, design and architecture. There are, however, a few exceptions to the
general education profile of the sampled artists. The Authentic Boys are the
only collective that includes artists that were trained outside the visual
domain: two members of the four-man group have an educational background
in theatre and performance. In the sense of artistic training,
Authentic Boys is the most interdisciplinary group. Bartholl, Roth and all
six members of the Brazilian collective BijaRi have a background in architecture;
these artists could not verify if architects possess competences that
are specifically useful in socially engaged art practices, but there are, of
course, some obvious similarities between the two. A similarity between
architects and socially engaged artists is found in the their urge for collaboration.
Roth: “Even though architects have these rock star names, it is like
no building ever was built by one person, right? It is kind of collaborative
by default.” Roth’s explanation is not satisfactory, since the practices of
theater makers and musicians are also collaborative by default. A better
explanation could be that architects and socially engaged artists are both
concerned with common social groups and they are both addressing real
life problems in public space. This connects with the central sources of
inspiration that I discussed above.
Although most of the interviewed artists have slightly different
competences, they generally prefer to work under the label ‘artist’, because
any other label is experienced as too restrictive. Fernandes of BijaRi: “I don’t
like to be a designer, everybody is a designer now. So you can be a hair
designer, you can be a sound designer, you can be whatever-designer, but
you can’t be a whatever-artist. There is not many adjectives.” Most of the
other artists are also uncomfortable with adjectives for the term ‘artist’.
Jeanne van Heeswijk, for instance, has to explain “in almost every interview”
that she is not a community artist: “My point of departure is rooted in art,
visual art in public space - and how important that public form is. But community
art is a goal in itself isn’t it? It does not work like that for me.” ‘Media
artists’ Roth and Bartholl stress that, although they are indebted to the field
of media art, they also prefer to describe their profession as ‘artist’. Bartholl
explains that media art is often neglected in the mainstream contemporary
art discourse: “A big part of these kinds of work are driven by the technology
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itself and not by concept, and that is also the critique of fine art people.”
Labels like community artist’ and ‘media artist’ are experienced as too
restrictive for artists who want to connect to the broad field of contemporary
art.
The interviews reveal that many artists do not mention specific
craftsmanship skills when asked about the key competences that you need
to operate in this practice. Some artists mention ‘drawing’ (Macotela,
Wandschappen) or technical skills like ‘video editing’ (BijaRi) and ‘programming’
(Roth), but they emphasize that these are not crucial for a successful
practice. Although ‘media artists’ like Roth and Bartholl acknowledge their
fascination for digital technology, they both point out that their interest is
always driven by the impact of technology on society, much less by technology
itself. Ivo van den Baar of Wandschappen is the only interviewed artist
who mentions physical material as an important artistic source: “I am really
sensitive to material. The use of material is that which distinguishes us from
others.” Almost none of the interviewed artists seems to think that the mastery
of technical skills or a specialization in certain artistic materials is
crucial. However, it is clear that all of the artists possess certain esthetical
and technical skills that they have developed over time.
As unimportant as technical or crafting skills may seem for these
artists, they do mention general skills and attitudes as crucial in this domain.
Several artists mention organizational and communicative skills as decisive
competences for a successful practice, like working with deadlines, multitasking,
keeping an administration and conscientious on and offline communication:
“We are quite good at organizing, I think that is a skill that
many artists are missing out on” (Wandschappen). They stress that these
competences are often not visible for outsiders, but they are in fact consuming
almost half of their working time: “Being an artist is really like half of it
is making art and half of it is like you are running a small business” (Roth).
Throughout the interviews, I noticed that all of the artists could
articulate their subject matter very well. Whereas some of the artists
declared that they are foremost practitioners and not theoreticians, everyone
shows the capability to explain their practice from an analytic or
theoretical perspective. The large role that competences around organization
and communication play in these practices justify the conclusion in my
theoretical chapter that the romantic image of the artist as an ‘unworldly
creator’ is no longer accurate.
Further important competences that were mentioned several times
have to do with personal attitudes. Some of these attitudes are related to persistence:
“keep making projects, even if you are criticized”, “having a strong
urgency to make art” or simply “being angry”. Another important attitude
can be identified as artistic sensibility: “I think that the most important thing
is sensibility; you must be able to work with many layers of meaning”
(Macotela). Pilvi Takala explains this sensibility in a somewhat different way:
“Being able to observe, like being open to know these things, that is a basic
artist position, to be able to look at things from the outside”. Matt from The
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Propeller Group adds a social dimension: “The ability to connect to people
and to listen to their ideas, those are crucial skills that I apply every day.”
Specifically these attitudinal and communicative competences seem to
embody important aspects of the artists competences, because they touch
upon the intrinsic motivation and the basic mode of operation that are
needed to work in this practice.
Domain: summary
On the basis of the data, I can state that the domain of socially engaged art
practices, as defined in the working definition, were replicated: real local
conditions and contemporary global themes are indeed the main source
of inspiration and are continuously explored with the artist as a linking pin
between various on and offline networks. Artists show an urge for activism
and policy formation, but this urgency is firmly rooted in the art domain,
which offers them conceptual methods to comment on and contribute to
contemporary society in playful, innovative and non-conformist ways. Art
production is a goal and a means at the same time for these artists: faith in
the autonomy of art is inseparable from a belief in its transformative potential
in real life contexts.
Socially engaged artists are trained as professional artists; they
prefer to be labeled as ‘artist’, without restrictive adjectives. Important
competences in this domain can be described as: artistic and social sensibility,
persistence, social and organizing skills. As the shared competences of these
artists are new outcomes in this study, I will add them to the characteristics
model as displayed in table 8. In the next two paragraphs of this chapter I
will explore the themes of community and practice.
Community: joint activities, information sharing and peer learning
Based on my literature review, I concluded that socially engaged artists are
part of an interactive, collaborative practice. The collaborative characteristic
is overwhelmingly reflected in the empirical data of this study, allowing me
to explore this aspect further and to distinguish three different forms of collaboration.
All of the interviewed artists operate in collaborative networks
that include aspects of cooperation (working together with other professionals),
networking (operating in strategic communities) and participation
(interaction with different audiences as an artistic theme). These forms of
collaboration are not new (Sawyer, 2007), but their prominence in socially
Domain: shared concerns, interests and competences
Existing human conditions are the main source of inspiration
– Members are professionally trained artists who value artistic, social, and organizing skills
over technical competences
– Artists relate local experiences to global processes
– Their practice is conceptually rooted in art, but located in cultural contexts associated with
activism and policy formation
Table 8: Updated characteristics of socially engaged practices, segment Domain.
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engaged art practices seems unmistakable: “I think that good art projects
can be made individually, but I think it is hard to deny that a lot of the more
interesting timely work in terms of new approaches towards art collaboration
is what is evolving” (Evan Roth). It is not my intention to present collaboration
in the arts as a new development, but the cases show that these
artists treat collaboration as a crucial aspect of contemporary art practice
and that the image of the artist as a lone genius is rendered as romantic
and outdated.
The focus on collaboration in this study also helped me to explore
aspects regarding information sharing and peer learning, which can be added
to the final definition of socially engaged artists. I will discuss the aspects
of collaboration and peer learning below, structured by the subthemes that
emerged from the data.
Collaboration as a production resource: professional cooperation
Curator Maria Lind (2007) has argued that the characteristics of the post-
Fordist working paradigm are mirrored in the cooperative practices of
contemporary artists. That characteristic is illustrated in the data of this
study: the interviewed artists and collectives cooperate regularly with other
professionals and alternate independent, self-motivated work with
group and teamwork. The post-Fordist working model is most significant
in the practices of the artists who have organized themselves in collectives:
F.A.T. Lab uses an e-mail network in which any member can discuss an idea
or a concept that can be realized when other members choose to join in,
forming a flexible team around the originating artist. Collectives like
BijaRi, The Propeller Group, Wandschappen and Authentic Boys have a
company-like structure with a collective authorship and in which responsibilities
and tasks are divided among the members. “We cannot stop our
commercial stuff to do the art works, we have to do it parallel. So, we split
everything into functions and jobs to make it work” (BijaRi). The organizing
structure of these collectives is horizontal in the sense that there is no
formal hierarchy; decisions are made on the basis of consensus and every
member is responsible for the entire enterprise. These artists emphasize
that working in group practice is efficient and productive: “We have
worked individually for ten years, but since we started to operate as a duo
things changed. You can compensate the weaknesses of the other and we
experience a much more fruitful workflow: faster and more intense”
(Wandschappen).
All of the interviewed artists and collectives cooperate regularly
with other professionals, both artists and non-artists. Even the artists that
have an individual practice underline that they maintain contacts with other
artists who will help each other whenever needed: “I do not collaborate in
the sense that we share authorship, but I help others or they help me. They
are artists and they know” (Takala). These working relationships are often
varying and temporary, depending on the type of work that is being produced.
Cooperation is seen as a means that enables the artists to do projects
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that require additional skills, knowledge or simply extra manpower: “If we
do bigger projects, like a performance, we invite people that work for us
during that time” (Authentic Boys).
I noticed that especially in these interdisciplinary art practices,
cooperation comes across as an important requirement. The interviewed
artists acknowledge that interdisciplinarity does not so much reside in an
individual artist, but can be established by combining the skills of people
with different expertise:. As Van Heeswijk says: “I do not believe in the artist
as a ‘homo universalis’, but I do believe that collaboration between disciplines
can lead to richer forms of knowledge”. There is a correlation between
the degree of interdisciplinarity of a project and the amount of professional
collaborators that are involved. Pilvi Takala prefers to work individually in
her small-scale ‘undercover’ video productions, but when a work involves
other disciplines she ‘hires’ the help of other artists and professionals. The
Propeller Group consists of members with different expertise, but for many
projects they call in additional expertise: “Sometimes our practice resembles
a film production, where a lot of different departments are coming together
to create a joint production”.
The equal exchange of knowledge and skills during cooperative processes
is a crucial aspect in the practices of these artists. The cooperative relationships
they develop are reciprocal and influence the working process and
the final products: “Cooperation creates things that I otherwise would not
have done” (Wandschappen). Cooperation is not only a means ‘to get the
job done’, it also contributes to the creative process, resulting in better art,
according to these artists. Evan Roth explains that artistic cooperation in art is
by no means a new phenomenon, but that the rise of digital technology and
online networks has accelerated ideas around collaborative work and collective
authorship. He argues that the commercial art market has largely maintained
the idea of the artist as a solitary genius, as opposed to the movie
industry where long credit lists have been the standard for decades. Roth:
“We are used to these forms of collaboration and it doesn’t scare us that an art
project or a collaborative group might have like 30 names attached to it. But
you don’t see those pieces going up for auction by Sotheby’s”. Professional
cooperation is an intrinsic aspect of many interdisciplinary art practices, but
the commercial forces in the art world continue to glorify the artist merely as
an individual producer. Digital or networked methods for collaborative artistic
production are not accepted in all of the various ‘art worlds’.
Collaboration as a strategic means: strategic networking
With the term networking I do not refer to direct collaboration in the sense
a cooperative production, but to the way artists seek connections with
others in order to exchange knowledge and to operate collectively. ”It is
easier to practice strategic separatism when you are a part of a group rather
than left on your own”, as Maria Lind argued in this respect (2009, p. 67).
Like all professionals, artists operate in communities of practice, which are
networks of communication consisting of people that associate themselves
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with art, like artists, curators, academics, students, etcetera. As artists do not
have salaried employment, they have to build their own professional environment,
and creating and joining different collaborative networks is an
important strategy to achieve that goal. Ivo van den Baar of Wandschappen
explains that creating networks is part of a survival strategy: “That is one of
the main reasons to seek interaction with others: to find information, to create
opportunities instead of just hiring people, which is also unaffordable”.
Most of the interviewed artists underline that producing brilliant work and
waiting to be discovered is not enough. “You have to create a scene”, says
Eduardo Fernandes of BijaRi:
You have to join a scene, create a scene, create a parallel
universe. It is the only way, because nobody will give you an
opportunity. We have this network, that allows us to say: ‘oh,
we are going to … let’s meet, come join us in this work’. That is
how it happens. (BijaRi)
Artists choose to work deliberately in those artistic ‘hotspots’ where they can
meet many other art professionals. Wandschappen have moved from the
south of the Netherlands to Rotterdam because of its rich local artistic network:
“In the last 15-20 years a lot of art people went to the Charlois area in
Rotterdam because the houses and studios are still affordable here…that
energy resulted in an enormous art community.” The need to tap into
dynamic artistic networks is an important drive for artists and is part of the
explanation why they tend to settle in the transitional neighborhoods of
central metropolitan areas (Markusen, 2006).
Some of the interviewed artists and collectives regard their practice
itself as a platform; a network structure or (virtual) place that invites others
to connect. Their practice functions as an intermediary that offers opportunities
for other artists to build upon: “The Authentic Boys collective
transforms itself slowly into a platform, not only for the work of its
members, but also for outsiders” (Authentic Boys). In such cases, the artists
maneuver themselves in a central position among other art professionals.
“Together we try to be a local force. Because of the dense concentration of
artists, there is a high potential for new projects in which we can mediate in
the sense of presentations, projects with residents, contacts with entrepreneurs,
companies and local governments” (Wandschappen). The urge to
build these networks or collaborative platforms is, in the end, not an altruistic
act for these artists and collectives. It can be seen as a strategy, not only to
attract possible new collaborations and projects, but to strengthen their
position in the art scene: “I don’t know if I become a better artist, but I think
I get more exposure being in a group. And exposure could lead to anything”
(The Propeller Group). The members of F.A.T. Lab can confirm this with
actual statistics: “F.A.T. Lab has a bigger viewership than any of the artists
members webpages individually. So by teaming up, we have a bigger influence
than we would have individually” (Roth). Artists like Bartholl and Roth,
who manifest themselves largely on the Internet, stress that the idea that
Open Source is about ‘giving things away for free’, is a perspective that is too
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limited: “I also like to promote the idea that Open Source can be a selfish
practice, like there are rewards that come back to you. You get engaged in a
really interesting community” (Roth). Artists join, create and maintain strategic
networks to establish themselves in the art world and to create opportunities
for new projects and collaborations.
Collaboration as an artistic theme: participation and interaction
Collaboration is not only a professional means or a survival strategy; for
many of the interviewed artists it is also an artistic theme that influences
and contributes to the subject matter of their work. A good example of how
this works surfaces in the practice of Antonio Vega Macotela: “One of the
main aspects of my way of work is related to the implications of working
with people in collaboration. When I am working with these people something
different is happening there. Almost like creating meaning right
there.” Macotela has produced work in which exchange processes between
the artist and local communities (prisoners, mine workers) are investigated.
The resulting art works read as artifacts or residues of these collaborations.
In such projects, collaboration and interaction not only define the working
process, but also reflect social themes like (un)employment, different value
systems and the behavior of social groups. For instance, artists like Bartholl
and Roth contribute their collaborate works to discussions about Open
Source sharing and the changing perception of copyright in a digitized and
networked (art) society:
Although so many things have changed with the rise of the
Internet, the commercial art world is still quite conservative in
terms of what kind of works are valuable in the market. But slowly
things do change. Many of my projects include, for instance,
downloadable tutorials. It is very rewarding to see when many
different people interact with your work. (Bartholl)
Such themed artistic collaborations often translate into hybrid author/audience
relationships. Working conversations are less about criticizing individual
ideas but involve the development of collective meaning: “Afterwards we
often do not remember who had the original idea. That is not important at
all” (Wandschappen). The members of The Propeller Group and the
Authentic Boys emphasize that they consider the audiences who participate
during performances or who interact with their work as co-authors: “An
audience could activate a work and be a participant in that way. When people
sent us pictures with our Viet Nam World Tour t-shirts on they became
actors in that project” (The Propeller Group).
Macotela and Takala mention that, in the sense of collaboration,
they distinguish two types of audiences: those who are directly involved in
the production of the artwork, and those who only see the end results when
the final work is on display. “That first audience has a huge influence on the
work because I don’t impose a kind of previously decided narrative. But
I am the one who decides how to edit it… I am in control” (Takala). The
amount of ‘control’ in such interactive working processes varies among the
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different projects that the artists execute. Many of the interviewed artists
create open situations with plenty of space for participation and improvisation,
but they direct and control the final artworks for the most part.
However, in some projects the artists function merely a facilitators, inviting
others to contribute or ‘finish’ the work and providing much more autonomy
for external participants as co-creators. A recent example of such a project
is the installation Permit-ful Zone (2013) that Pilvi Takala created in a
shopping mall in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Takala requested permits that
allow visitors to perform, sell (self-made) goods, or roller-skate in a central
area of the mall; activities that would normally not be allowed in this privatized
space. The installation works as an ‘empty canvas’ that audiences
can bring to life. Bartholl and Roth have initiated similar open projects in
the digital realm:
In some of my projects my voice almost disappears. Like in White
Glove Tracking (2007) a collaborative group of people were acting
like online data collectors. […] We released that data back to
another group of people that were then visualizing it. It was a project
that had open data and open visualization and my role as an
artist became nebulous in a sense. (Roth)
An artist like Van Heeswijk sees herself primarily as a participant among
other participants during most of her art projects: “If a project like
Freehouse works right, there are multiple authors. It is not about becoming
one, but about feeling as one, it is about taking responsibility.” Similar to
BijaRi and Wandschappen, Van Heeswijk addresses discussions around public
space and local politics through complex interactive projects with many
participating citizens, professionals and amateurs. These artists maneuver
as ‘real life directors’ who facilitate the creative collaborative forces in specific
local communities. Wandschappen emphasize this artistic position in
the following statement: “Our work deals with questions like: why do you
live here, and what can you contribute? There are 160 nationalities here and
we are planning to distill one specific material or craft out of each country.”
Collaboration becomes an artistic theme when artists create projects in
which social processes themselves are activated as creative engines, blurring
the boundaries between author, cooperator and spectator.
Collective learning
One of the specific themes in this study entails the way artists share information
and learn in communities of practice. My research already showed
that none of the investigated artists conform to the image of the artist as an
isolated producer. Some artists present themselves as individual practitioners,
but all of them participate in collaborative networks in which they share
knowledge and services with peers, other professionals or various audiences.
Lave and Wenger have argued that whenever people operate in communities
of practice, learning is an automatic ‘side effect’. This effect is
replicated in this study: all of the artists confirm that collaboration and
interaction contribute to their building of knowledge and skills. Below, I will
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discuss the two main types of interactive knowledge production that take
place in the practices of the interviewed artists.
The first type of learning that I found within the practices of these
artists can be described as learning through critical exchange. This includes
all forms of learning that take place in the periphery of the art production
itself, including learning by example, peer feedback and group discussion.
Most of the artists mention that forms of critical exchange are core to the
learning processes they engage in in their practices: “Your friends, your peer
group, the works you look at … there always is interesting content floating
around. That is sort of learning to me” (Bartholl). Colleagues and peers are
important resources for learning, both through the work they produce and
through direct contact with the artists: “The main teacher is the other artist,
the colleagues who provide me with feedback. It helps to see how other people
work, what kind of strategies they use.” (Takala). And van Heeswijk adds:
“If you have the chance to examine the work of colleagues thoroughly, or if
you can exchange thoughts or have a debate with them… that is when I
learn a lot”.
The artists who work as collectives have the advantage that such
discussions and critiques are ‘embedded’ in their daily working routine.
Most of the collectives mention the use of loosely structured methods to
evaluate and discuss projects like meetings and group discussions. The
opportunity to have a critical exchange on a regular basis is an important
motivator for the formation of art collectives: “F.A.T. Lab is almost like an
excuse to be in daily communication with this group of people that are
highly influential” (Roth). Fernandes of BijaRi understands his collective as
a longitudinal learning community: “After an 18 year relationship views
sometimes gets biased because you know what the other will say (laughing).
But that is part of continuous learning. We evolve.” The members of
The Propeller Group and Authentic Boys emphasize that working collectively
enhances the exchange of multiple viewpoints: “If you are in a group
discussion with four people, you have to be open minded. That is a big part
of my learning process” (Authentic Boys). A member of The Propeller
Group compares these critique sessions with the traditional powwow sessions
of Native Americans. In a powwow, people gather around a central
object or topic and every participant gives his or her interpretation of the
piece or topic: “That is how I like to think of collective and collaborate practice,
it ads multiple layers and multiple viewpoints of accessibility that one
wouldn’t have individually” (Matt Lucero of The Propeller Group). Artists
learn through critical exchange, using (the work of) colleagues as sounding
boards, either within organized group structures or via wider informal
and professional networks.
The second type of group learning that emerged from the data can
be described as learning through joint creation. This type is related to forms
of learning that take place during the collaborative production of artworks.
As I have concluded earlier, most relationships that artists develop
during cooperative production processes are reciprocal, in the sense that
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collaborators contribute to the meaning to the work. This entails that a
collaborative art production can be seen as an immersive, holistic learning
process: “It is a constant learning experience as long as we are working
together. Not just learning the right or wrong, it is learning everything: the
right is wrong” (The Propeller Group). Cooperation between people with
different backgrounds and additional competences reinforces multi and
interdisciplinary learning during artistic productions: “My interdisciplinary
practice is influenced by architecture and the way you learn in that
field: architects know a lot about everything, but they are no specialists,
right?” (Bartholl). These cooperative learning relationships are often not
planned in advance, but they develop as the project progresses. Often, the
art project itself functions as an open invitation for new collaborations:
“Our conversations are not so much about just asking for feedback but
more about sending out ideas as an invitation. Like: hey guys, I have this
project idea, would anybody like to work on this with me?” (Roth). Most of
the artists operate in practices that elicit a constant and dynamic exchange
with others, either colleagues or non-artists: “I believe in the ambiguity of
thinking together. Making art is for me a form of collective development
and learning” (Van Heeswijk). Collective art production is less about executing
a preconceived plan, but about developing ideas collectively. “Better
ideas come with other people” argues Macotela in that respect. The process
of making art is perceived as a learning enterprise, initiated by the interests
and questions of the artists.
Throughout the interviews it became clear to me that collective
production accelerates learning processes. Many artists have reported that
group work, compared to individual work, produces more energy and
stamina, resulting in higher productivity. Some of the artists in this study
have emphasized that art studies do not pay enough attention to these
practice-based forms of collaborative learning for professional artists:
“Every designer does internships, but these are lacking in autonomous art
studies. That is a pity, because collaboration with other artists is the only
way to really learn the trade” (Wandschappen). John Maeda, director of the
Rhode Island School of Design, has argued that art is about asking (learning)
questions that are investigated through the production of artworks
(Maeda, 2012). I found support for that view among the artists in this study,
illustrated in the following quote by Pilvi Takala: “I decide to do this kind of
interventions, performance to learn something. The things I learned, that
is actually what I show.” Cooperative art productions offer holistic and
reciprocal learning experiences for all the participants involved, including
the artist.
Community: summary
Overall, the empirical findings in this section provide a deeper understanding
of joint activities, information sharing and peer learning in socially
engaged art practices. The theoretical characteristic that socially engaged
artists are part of an interactive and collaborative practice was confirmed to
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an extent that allowed further exploration of the working definition: three
distinctive types of collaboration -as a production resource, as a strategic
means and as an artistic theme- that emerged from the data will thus be
added to the working definition. Collaboration as a production resource
entails forms of professional cooperation that are necessary to produce
socially engaged art works. This form of collaboration is used by individual
artists and by collectives, particularly as a means for interdisciplinary
exchange. Collaboration as a strategic means refers to all of the collaborative
activities that artists deploy to engage in, create or expand professional
networks. Such networks reinforce the artists’ strategic position in the art
world and they create opportunities for new work. Collaboration as an
artistic theme involves all forms of art production in which social processes
themselves are part of the subject matter. Participation and interaction with
different social groups (professional and non-professional), and blurring
boundaries between author, cooperator and spectator are prominent features
of this form of collaboration.
The characteristics that emerged around the themes of information
sharing and peer learning were not part of the working theory. I found two
major types of information sharing and peer learning that occur in these
socially engaged art practices: critical exchange and joint creation. Critical
exchange refers to the forms of peer learning that transpire in art
communities, somewhat apart from the production process itself. Artists
use their community of practice as a sounding board in which the work of
other artists is analyzed, to receive and give peer feedback and for group
discussion. Joint creation entails all the forms of group learning that are
embedded in the art production process itself. The creation of a collective
or participatory art work creates forms of thinking and working together
that can be typified as immersive forms of learning.
I added these specifications and new characteristics to the theoretical
model, as shown in table 9. In the last section of this study I will
explore the last section of the communities of practice model: the practice
of socially engaged artists.
Domain: shared concerns, interests and competences
Existing human conditions are the main source of inspiration
– Members are professionally trained artists who value artistic, social, and organizing
skills over technical competences
– Artists relate local experiences to global processes
– Their practice is conceptually rooted in art, but located in cultural contexts associated
with activism and policy formation
Community: joint activities, information sharing, peer learning
– Artists are part of interactive, collaborative practice
– Collaboration is used as a production resource, a strategic means and/or as an
artistic theme
– Critical exchange and joint creation are important forms for information sharing and
peer learning
Table 9: Updated characteristics of socially engaged practices, segments Domain and Community.
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Production: shared repertoire of socially engaged art practices
In this last section I will analyze the data that transpired from regarding the
operational level of socially engaged art practices. My aim is to explore the
characteristics that define the activities of artists as producers of a shared
repertoire of resources within their domain, including their artistic form,
method and sources of income. My theoretical investigation revealed that
socially engaged artists produce various forms of work through interdisciplinary
production methods and that the primary concern of these artists is
to establish creative processes, rather than to create artistic objects. The
empirical data confirm these characteristics to a large extent but also reveal
additional and sometimes slightly contradictory aspects that call for a redefinition
and extension of the theory-based characteristics.
The process-based characteristic proved to be important to all the
artists, but many have stressed that these process solidify in products that
allow audiences to get a better understanding of the process that lies underneath.
For these artists, the quality of the artistic product is important too,
as it embodies the artistic concept and process. The interdisciplinary characteristic
applies to all the practices in this study, but needed to be analyzed at
two different levels. All of the interviewed artists use different artistic forms
that match different concepts or ideas. However, interdisciplinarity can also
be interpreted as the capacity to operate in various artistic fields and for different
audiences. These plural practices emerged in various forms in this
study, including hybrid practices in which the same artists or collective produces
both autonomous and applied forms of art. The analysis of these different
forms and levels of interdisciplinarity provided me with a deeper
comprehension of the various methods that artists use to generate an
income through their artistic practice. I will discuss the updated characteristics
below, structured on the basis of the different sub-themes that emerged
from the interview data.
Process and object-based practices
Most of the interviewed artists describe their artistic method as one that is
primarily aimed at developing ideas, rather than by experiments with preselected
materials and techniques. “In the beginning of my process, I never
think even about how it will look as an art piece. Of course I have a feeling
about what might work, but the last thing to decide is the format” (Takala).
The documentation of research and idea development processes comes
forward as an important feature in many of the studied practices, as an
ongoing ‘breeding ground’ for possible future projects: “I think the ideas
that feel good over an extended period of time, those are the ones I intend to
move forward” (Roth). Roth argues that such process-based approaches were
missing from the general art education he received at school: “I don’t really
remember ever being pushed on the idea side, thinking about art as something
that is really about ideas, which is all I care about in my art practice”.
This remark is supported by many critical studies in the field of art education,
which indicate that a large amount of the art curricula at schools value
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technical skills over conceptual skills (Harland, 2008; Winner et al., 2013).
Although all the artists consider themselves to be operating in a
visual domain, the process of idea and concept development does not
always require visual research methods: “I make notes, I write, I don’t
draw… at all actually” (Takala). Either visual or textual, most of the artists
use quick methods to document ideas that could be useful at a certain point
in time. The lines between process and product-based art production can
become blurred when the documentation material becomes the actual artwork.
Good examples are the video registrations that BijaRi use to document
meetings and other events in Sao Paulo’s public areas: “We register all process
and everything. The video is specifically a way to transpose the action in
the streets to other spaces, like a gallery space.” Such process or researchbased
approaches fit Bourriaud’s demarcation of contemporary artworks as
expressions of a journey, rather than as fixed objects in space and time
(Bourriaud, 2009a). The artwork does not mark the end of a process, but a
‘frozen moment’ in an ongoing process. “I see my practice as an ongoing
series of feedback loops: at a certain moment there is a critical mass that
crystallizes into an artwork. That can be a discussion, a market, people gathering…
such moments can coagulate into a form, like a book, a film or a
workshop” (van Heeswijk). All of the interviewed artists agree that their
practice is not predominantly defined through the visual appearance of
their artworks, but through the ideas and attitudes that they communicate.
This vision confirms the process-based characteristic, as mentioned in the
working definition, even among the artists who operate in adjacent fields
like media art and applied art: “Our work is stylistically ambiguous, but
when you look at our oeuvre there is a identifiable mentality or atmosphere”
(Wandschappen).
As I have discussed above, the development of ideas and concepts is
the driving force in socially engaged art practices. However, during the interviews
it became clear to me that my characteristic of these practices as process-based
instead of object-based is too restrictive, because it suggests that
the art object loses its importance in a process-based practice. All of the studied
artists have emphasized that their artworks are crucial as signifiers of
the social, political and creative processes that they want to communicate:
“Both the process and the product are important because the final form is a
condensation of what you research” (BijaRi). Such practice descriptions echo
the ideas of art critic Rosalind Krauss, who describes post-modern artwork
as the index of artistic processes, “… just as the footprint in soft ground is
proof that someone has passed by” (Krauss, 1973, p. 3). Artworks in socially
engaged art practices surface in many forms: from traditional forms like
drawings and objects to documented events through videos, websites and
texts. Such artworks should not be viewed in isolation; they embody a wide
array of contexts, processes and meanings: “Art to me is more than a series
of objects. Art is also about: what works as art? It is about the whole aesthetical
experience, or the whole ethical experience, or the interaction with the
work” (Van Heeswijk). The form of the art product is not determined at the
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beginning of the creative process but marks moments of condensation
during research-based processes. The research process is what steers the
artistic practice, and is communicated through artworks. The members of
The Propeller Group point out that the artistic process does not have to end
with the final art product: “Because we feel like sometimes the final work
still carries on the process. Even after it has been showed, even after it has
been dictated as complete” (The Propeller Group). Like The Propeller Group,
many of the other artists produce objects that create ongoing creative,
discursive and participatory processes.
The quality of the artwork is important because it determines to
what extent it is able to allow the audience an entrance into the ideas and
processes the artist wants to transfer: “As an artist you have to be skillful
and clever enough to make things matter, like these meanings, because otherwise
you are not an artist” (Macotela). Some socially engaged artists may
use forms that look very informal or ‘un-artistic’, but they still are aware
that every form or medium represents many layers of messages: “I’m not
concerned with form so much, but as the means of communication, it has a
form. So you cannot ignore it totally” (Takala). When asked, the interviewed
artists do use different criteria to judge the quality of their artworks. The
criteria they apply are rarely esthetical; they seem typically associated with
the specific message that each artwork has to communicate. Some criteria
that were mentioned are: “it has to be accessible and visually intriguing”
(Roth); “it has to rock” (BijaRi); “it has to be a good narrative” (Takala); “It
should be accurate and sharp without simplification” (Van Heeswijk).
Criteria around craftsmanship were only seldom mentioned, but they seem
to be more important in the applied practices than in the autonomous
practices. BijaRi and Wandschappen were the only artists who mentioned
aesthetical standards commercial work: “It has to be crafted excellently,
otherwise we do not allow it to leave the studio” (Wandschappen).
Nevertheless, the ability to sell work commercially influences the final
product, also in the autonomous practices: “In the art world, most of the
people care for the product. I understand this, because in a gallery or museum
work matters” (Macotela). Socially engaged artists use a wide array of
research-based methods and forms, but significance in gallery and museum
circuits is largely decided on the basis of the quality of the final product.
Platforms outside the traditional domains of art and design seem to
provide more space for process-based art production. For example: Roth
and Bartholl, who release a part of their oeuvre only on the Internet,
acknowledge that Internet audiences are attracted by ideas and less by the
appearance of the work: “On the Web the actual item doesn’t have to be
beautiful, or visually intriguing, That is something I have been thinking
about more as I start to exhibit more work in galleries, since the Internet is
not going to pay the bills” (Roth).
Based on this section, I can argue that socially engaged art practices
are primarily driven by research and process-based forms of art production
in which the final art product is important as a signifier or extender of such
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processes. Final works are imperative when artists want to operate in commercial
and museum settings.
Interdisciplinarity: intermedia and hybrid practices
The empirical data that I discussed above substantiated my theory-based
assumption that, within socially engaged art practices, the choice of an artistic
form and medium is not a point of departure, but a decision dependent
on the artistic research process that is being developed. This supports my
theoretical characteristic of socially engaged art artists as interdisciplinary
producers, resulting in artworks with many different forms: “I am not starting
from the medium of course. My works are not connected by medium,
but they are connected hopefully through an approach” (Roth). Such interdisciplinary
forms of art production reflect the post-medium condition in
contemporary art, which entails that the artistic medium is understood as a
supporting system that generates specific sets of conventions (Krauss, 1999).
“You have to be careful you know, because each medium is also meaningful
by itself. I try not to use them randomly” (Macotela). Such art practices are
not defined by media “…but rather in relation to the logical operations on a
set of cultural terms, for which any medium -photography, books, lines on
walls, mirrors, or sculpture itself- might be used” (Krauss, 1979, p. 42). As I
have discussed above, socially engaged artists do not consider the choice of
specific media as unimportant, but they view the medium itself as a signifier
of the processes and ideas they want to express. Their interdisciplinary
art production is a logical result from a their conceptual and process-driven
art practice. However, analysis of the data showed to me that the characteristic
‘interdisciplinary art production’ needs to be further differentiated to
grasp the practices of the interviewed artists and collectives. Below, I argue
that interdisciplinary art production can be interpreted in two ways.
The first interpretation of interdisciplinarity refers to the different,
interconnected forms and techniques that artists use to produce their artworks.
Socially engaged artists operate more as generalists than as mediumspecialists,
varying their artistic form dependent on the situations and
problems in which they engage: “We consider our practice as open and
probably by that fact interdisciplinary would be a good kind of categorization”
(The Propeller Group). Tuan, one of the members of The Propeller
Group, states that interdisciplinary production is logical outcome of their
collective practice: “Interdisciplinarity arises out of a necessity. For us it
essentializes the collaborative process. Even between ourselves we are very
interdisciplinary. There are things that Phunam and Matt have specialized in
that I don’t know about.” Inter-media art production would be a useful term
to distinguish these processes within interdisciplinary art practices because
it refers specifically to the production process itself.
A second view on interdisciplinarity is broader than inter-medial
production and is related to the overlapping fields in which socially
engaged artists operate. All of the interviewed artists and collectives regard
themselves as operating in the field of autonomous art, but most of them
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are also active in adjacent fields, either within or outside the arts. These
include not only the preselected practices operating in the applied arts, but
also some of the ‘autonomous’ artists, who manifest themselves in plural
fields and networks.
Van Winkel, Gielen and Zwaan (2012) distinguished three artist typologies
among Dutch and Flemish artists that graduated between 1975 and
2005. A minority of the artists was typified as monolithic; they run autonomous
studio-based practices, relatively isolated from other societal domains.
Almost half of the studied artists could be typified as pluriactive. Those are
the artists who alternate autonomous and applied art forms in their practices.
These artists are operative in different societal networks and platforms,
but there is a relatively strict boundary between autonomous and applied
domains. Approximately a third of the artists could be typified as hybrid.
They operate in practices where autonomous and applied art productions
are treated as equivalent and blurring aspects.
All of the artists in my empirical study match the profile of the
hybrid artist in the social sense. Social hybridity refers to blending processes of
different societal domains or value regimes, like the civil world, the word of
inspiration and the market (Van Winkel et al., 2012). The artists in my research
project show many characteristics of social hybridization as they cross the
boundaries between different social contexts within the same practice: “I definitely
view my practice as interdisciplinary, both in terms of communities I
am taking influence from and also the communities that I am addressing as
collaborators and as audiences” (Roth). As I have discussed earlier in my dissertation,
socially engaged artists are actively looking for meaningful connections
between different communities and domains in their practices. Social
networking is experienced as a necessity and not as a problem, like in many
monolithic practices (Van Winkel et al., 2012). “I move between different disciplines
because I think that building society, if at all possible, is an interdisciplinary
task” (Van Heeswijk). Some of the interviewed artists emphasize
that the way they operate across different societal domains is not always
understood. Wandschappen propose that the societal profile of the artist
should be revised:
Art is often seen as an isolated, redundant and money consuming
domain, whereas I think that in any context where you put an artist,
new ideas will evolve. We were six weeks in a supermarket, that
was fun. The role of the artist is much more interesting than society
acknowledges.
There is a friction between the modus operandi of hybrid artists and the
typology of the monolithic artists, which still seems to dominate the general
view of art.
Most practices in this study also reflect the characteristics of artistic
hybridity, although I noticed gradual differences between them. Antonio
Macotela and Pilvi Takala reflect all the characteristics of social hybridity but
in an artistic sense they resemble the monolithic type more, as their production
deploys entirely in the autonomous art domain. A possible reason for
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this profile could be that both artists had a very successful international
practice at an early stage in their career, which offered them the opportunity
to focus mainly on their autonomous work. Their main income consists of
public funding in the form of grants, residencies and invitations from art
institutes. This reflects a form of artistic hybridization, because they operate
as art entrepreneurs towards public bodies, instead of just selling their work
to galleries and museums. Macotela’s artworks are not even for sale: “I have
never sold a work. Not even one. My work with has to do with economy,
selling it effects the concept. I am not selling because it is a moral thing”
(Macotela).
The collectives BijaRi and Wandschappen fit the artistic hybrid
type more, as they alternate between applied and autonomous work:
“We do commercial work like graphic design, animations and video
productions and we established this activist artistic practice in parallel….
that is important for us” (BijaRi). In both of these practices commercial
work is the main source of income for the artists: “Because our income
was not sufficient as autonomous artists, we started to think what we
had to offer to other fields. That is how we got into the world of design”
(Wandschappen). Although both collectives experience the worlds of
design and art as separated fields, they are seen as reinforcing domains
that contribute to the same practice. “All the work bears our signature.
People recognize it, in spite of the different platforms we operate on”
(Wandschappen). Educardo Fernandes of BijaRi describes how their
autonomous practice functions both as a laboratory and a promotion
device: “Art has always been our department of research and development.
We use our art as a sort of marketing tool so our clients can say: ‘O, I did
not hire a service guy, you’re an artist!’” (BijaRi). It is typical for hybrid
artists that they experience the dissolving borders between applied and
autonomous activities as positive effects that contribute to their artistic
profile (Van Winkel et al., 2012). Within the practices of BijaRi and
Wandschappen, applied and autonomous art are two sides of the same
conceptual coin.
In the practices of FAT-Lab members Aram Bartholl and Evan Roth,
autonomous and applied activities are more integrated than in the former.
These artists work primarily as autonomous artists, though their main
income is not generated through art sales but through festival invitations,
assignments, teaching activities, public lectures and self-organized events.
Their artistic production is hybrid, as a single work might surface in no less
than three different contexts: as autonomous art in a gallery, as media art on
a media festival, and as playful, activist non-art on the Internet: “This notion
that you can get very different audiences looking at the same piece and
taking something from it is definitely a goal in my work” (Roth). Hybrid art
production is not only motivated economically, but also features as an artistic
urge. Such interdisciplinary cross-overs are not always appreciated in the
commercial art circuit, especially when new media are involved: “On one
hand these galleries know there is something big going on on the Internet,
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but at the same time they are very protective on how art functions in their
sense” (Bartholl).
The ‘most’ hybrid artists in an artistic sense are the Authentic Boys,
The Propeller Group and Jeanne van Heeswijk. These are the practices in
which autonomous and applied art seem undistinguishable. A good example
is ‘Rehearsing Revolution’ by the Authentic Boys (2012). This project was
commissioned as an educational project for high school kids, but could
also be interpreted as an autonomous, participatory art project that was
documented via photographs, which are sold as individual artworks: “We
have a distinctive style - not visual art and not theatre. It has become our
Authentic Boys style, artistically” (Authentic Boys). Van Heeswijk works
mostly on invitations from local governments and art institutes and her
work shifts between the disciplines of architecture, community art and
autonomous art. Her hybrid practice is constantly changing, mainly
because of the different forms of collaboration it evokes. “The cooperative
structures for each project are based on the central problem. The problem
defines the expertise that is needed, the product and the audience” (Van
Heeswijk). The Propeller Group operates as an audiovisual company, but the
larger part of its activities take place in the autonomous art domain. Unlike
Wandschappen and BijaRi, The Propeller Group refuses to make a clear distinction
between autonomous or commercial work, which is not always
understood by outsiders:
We are trying to do two things at once. A lot of the curators
that we met are intrigued by that ambiguity. They are critical of
the fact that we don’t take a definite stand as artists or media
producers or filmmakers. (The Propeller Group)
Domain: shared concerns, interests and competences
Existing human conditions are the main source of inspiration
– Members are professionally trained artists who value artistic, social, and organizing skills over
technical competences
– Artists relate local experiences to global processes
– Their practice is conceptually rooted in art, but located in cultural contexts associated with
activism and policy formation
Community: joint activities, information sharing, peer learning
– Artists are part of interactive, collaborative practice
– Collaboration is used as a production resource, a strategic means and/or as an artistic theme
– Critical exchange and joint creation are important forms for information sharing and
peer learning
Practice: production of a shared repertoire of resources
The art practice is interdisciplinary and process-based:
– Intermedia artworks function as signifiers of artistic and social processes
– Practitioners operate as hybrid artists in different social, autonomous and applied fields
Table 10: Characteristics of socially engaged practices
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Production: Summary
This last paragraph enables me to redefine the characteristics of the practice
of socially engaged artists. The process-based and interdisciplinary characteristics
from the working definition were verified, but needed to be refined,
based on the data. These practices are indeed process-based, but the artwork
is important as a signifier of these research processes, which is lacking in
the current working definition. The former definition was also lacking the
relationship between process-based production and interdisciplinarity,
which is clearly present in my analysis. The urge to produce interdisciplinary
work and to operate in different societal domains is rooted in a
process-based approach toward art production. Analysis of the data around
interdisciplinarity and income allowed me to operationalize the term interdisciplinary
production further, providing a more nuanced image of interdisciplinarity.
Socially engaged artists produce inter-medial work and they
operate as hybrid artists in different social, autonomous and applied fields.
The definitive characteristics are visualized in table 10.
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Conclusion
The aim of my empirical study in this chapter was to validate and explore the
theory-based characteristics of socially engaged art practices through empirical
data of contemporary artists, and to add new characteristics based on the
learning methods and skills of contemporary artists. I selected a group of artists
and collectives who are predominantly not included in the conversation
around socially engaged art. The only exception was Jeanne van Heeswijk,
who is a prominent artist in this discourse. The selected group represented
autonomous artists and artists with blended practices, in which autonomous
art is combined with either media art or design.
My main conclusion on the basis of the interviews is that all the
main theory-based characteristics of socially engaged art are indeed substantiated
in the practices of the artists in my sample. Although the selected practices
are quite varied with regard to their subject matter and style, they share
significant resemblances regarding the participants’ concerns, interests,
mutual interaction and production methods. The discourse around socially
engaged art is often regarded as highly theoretical, but I found that there is an
empirical and contemporary foundation for this phenomenon. My research
shows that socially engaged art practices are a lived reality, on a global scale
(in South and North America, Asia and Europe) and on a local scale (the metropolitan
area of Rotterdam, the Netherlands).
Second, this empirical data allowed me to add characteristics
relating to learning and competences to the definition of socially engaged
artists. These artists value a mix of competences: artistic and social sensibility,
persistence, social and organizing skills. I can also conclude that collaborative
art practices offer opportunities for peer learning through critical exchange
and joint art creation. Collective forms of learning were marked as the most
important and valuable forms of learning for these artists.
Third, an important finding of my empirical study is that both artists
who operate in the field of media art and artists who work as designers reflect
the characteristics of socially engaged art, which is rarely acknowledged in
the theoretical discourse. Socially engaged practices are not confined to the
realm of fine art, but extend across the fields of media art and applied arts.
This adds to the typology of socially engaged artists as hybrid artists, who
blend multiple social contexts and artistic fields in the same practice.
Fourth, the partially inductive nature of this study provided me with
more details regarding how socially engaged practices operate as a domain,
how artists operate as a collaborative community and how processes around
art production and income transpire. The analysis of these details resulted in
a revised definition of socially engaged practice, based on the communities of
practice model. This final definition enables a comparison between informal
and formal learning communities in the field of art education.
Finally, I would like to add two critical remarks concerning my
conclusions. Firstly, I acknowledge that my method of purposive, criterionbased
sampling already predicted some of the outcomes of this study, as
the sample cases were partly chosen based on characteristics in the working
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definition. I believe that this selection method was nevertheless fruitful,
because the working definition was merely based on theoretical discourses
and was aimed at exploring contemporary socially engaged art practices,
rather than empirically verifying the existence of the phenomenon. Secondly,
the current study has mainly examined the similarities between the different
practices of socially engaged artists. This could raise the suggestion that
socially engaged artists operate as one ‘big happy community’, sharing exactly
the same ideas and practices. I think that there are many interesting differences
between these artists with regard to their work, their beliefs and
opinions, which could be analyzed further. I did try to not hide these dissimilarities,
but since my study was aimed at defining shared characteristics, the
resemblances of socially engaged artists were highlighted more than their
mutual variations and conflicting individualities.
The final definition of contemporary socially engaged art practices
provides me with an answer to the research question that was formulated for
chapters 4 and 5 of this study: How does artistic development and learning
take place among contemporary artists and what are their sources of inspiration?
The literature review and the empirical study of socially engaged art
practices offer significant understandings with regard to the interests, competences,
learning methods and productions of today’s professional visual
producers. The characteristics of professional art production that I defined
will be related to the context of art authentic education, together with the
characteristics of present-day informal visual production, which were defined
in chapters 2 and 3. Both definitions inform a new model for authentic art
education that I will develop and discuss in the next chapter.
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The studies into informal visual networks and socially engaged artists
(chapters 2-5) are significant as an exploration of the original design
principles of authentic art education. They indicate that contemporary
informal and formal art practices operate in the opposite direction of
modernism-based curriculums, in the sense that technique and form
are subservient to the expression of personal and societal engagement.
In this chapter I will compare the characteristics of informal
and professional visual production and learning that I defined in the
previous chapters. As I consider these characteristics as contemporary
informants for authentic visual learning, I will use them to update
and expand the original design principles of authentic art education.
The reformulated principles of authentic art education enable me to
design and underpin a new model for authentic art education. This
chapter functions as a linchpin in my design-based research project,
because I argue that contemporary forms and methods of visual production
can be connected with theories of learning in order to produce
guidelines for practitioners in the field of art education. This
imaginative leap from practice to educational theory aims to provide
an understanding of how the principles of authentic art edu cation
can be aligned with regard to contemporary developments in relevant
fields outside school. The theoretical exploration is paralleled with
the development of an educational model that aids teachers to
implement the revised characteristics of authentic art education in
their practices. This chapter concludes the investigation phase of
this research project. In the subsequent phases, the new model and
its underlying design principles will be tested and evaluated in educational
practice.
Research question and methodology
The analysis and design process that I will discuss in this chapter enable
me to answer the following research question: How can the characteristics
of contemporary informal and professional communities of practice inform a
pedagogical model for contemporary authentic art education? To answer this
question, I will follow an inductive approach, using data that I discussed in
the previous chapters as well as additional theoretical sources.
In the first stage I will compare the characteristics of informal and
professional visual producers that I defined in chapters 2-5. This comparison
enables me to determine similarities and differences with regard to how
participants act and learn in two apparently opposite artistic fields: the
informal domain of amateurs and spontaneous visual producers and the
professional art domain in which artists and designers operate. The results
of this comparison are synthesized in a new definition that delineates which
characteristics of contemporary visual production are specific for the informal
domain, the professional domain, or which are shared by both domains.
In the next stage, I will align the characteristics of contemporary
visual production with the existing design principles of authentic art
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education (Haanstra, 2001; Roelofs & Houtveen, 1999). As authentic art
education strives for meaningful connections with youth culture and professional
art, the characteristics of contemporary visual production that I
defined are interpreted as informants to update its original design principles
and to construct a revised and more specific model for authentic art
education. As is customary in design-based research, the revised design
principles that constitute the new model will be formulated as heuristic
statements: they provide guidance for educational designers and teachers
to create and implement specific pedagogical interventions (Van den Akker,
1999). The heuristic design principles are design-oriented or prescriptive
(Merrill, 2002) and they are intended as working hypotheses that can be
tested in practice, rather than as universally applicable strict ‘rules’.
From visual practice to educational design principle
As a curriculum based on authentic art education strives for connections
with artistic developments outside formal schooling institutes, it makes
sense to align the characteristics of informal and professional communities
found with the original design principles of authentic art education. The
informal and professional communities that were discussed in chapters 2-5
do not represent the average informal visual producer or artist but communities
of innovators. I regard them as creative vanguards that unmistakably
reflect the trends and characteristics of contemporary visual production,
which in turn can inform an art curriculum that aims for meaningful
connections to the worlds outside school.
Shared and distinctive features of informal and professional
visual practice
In order to determine the main similarities and differences between visual
production in the informal and the professional domain, I will compare
the characteristics of informal and professional visual producers, which
I defined in chapters 2-5. This step is important because it enables me to
combine and generalize these characteristics in such a way that they can
be aligned with the existing design principles of authentic art education.
Wenger’s (2006a) community of practice model is used to compare the
characteristic of informal and professional visual production.
There are notable correspondences with regard to how informal
and professional visual communities operate in their domain. A disciplinecentered
approach, which is common in many traditional art curricula, is
nearly absent among informal and professional artists. Both communities
find their ideas and subjects for artistic production outside the established
art world. Informal and professional art producers find inspiration in contemporary
sources and issues, respectively in mass media and popular culture
and in the social conditions of human existence. Another similarity
between the informal and professional producers is that their production
enables them to construct complex personal languages and ideas, which
allows members to become experts in certain topics and competences.
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However, the shared concerns of artists are much more grounded in
conceptual art, critical reflection, politics and activism than is the case with
informal art producers. Professional artists keep more critical distance to
the subjects and forms they engage with, whereas informal art production
has a close relationship with the fascinations and personality of the producer.
Informal creative production can be a ‘by-product’ of friendship-driven
interaction that includes modes like ‘hanging out’ and ‘messing about’
(Lange & Ito, 2010).
When I compare how the community operates with regard to joint
activities, information sharing and peer learning, there are also similarities
between the two researched communities. In the informal and professional
communities, various forms of collaboration (cooperative, interactive, networked),
are essential aspects of the practice. This is connected to the aspect
of learning: members of informal and professional art communities learn
through collective production and critical peer reflection.
There are also similarities with regard to the practice of these
different communities. Both the informal and the professional communities
produce work that is meaningful in different real world artistic and
social contexts. Their production methods can be typified as interdisciplinary
since artistic materials and forms may vary dependent on the idea the
producer wants to express. These are holistic practices because the development
of ideas and form and the mastery of techniques and skills are parallel
and interwoven processes. In relation to the production process itself, the
informal producers are less articulate about their artistic and social
processes than the professional artists. Most professionals document such
processes to a high degree; sometimes the documentation even becomes
the artwork itself. Visual production in the informal domain is more aimed
at end results. Final products are often documented via photos, videos or on
websites, but artistic processes are relatively short compared to the professionals
and often remain invisible. However, as most informal producers
dedicate several products to the same theme or form, their practice also has
process-based aspects. They develop personal ideas and styles over time, via
series of related products. Finally, copying and appropriation, typically discouraged
in the traditional art curriculum, are fully accepted artistic methods
among both informal and professional visual producers.
Table 11 displays the most significant similarities and differences
between informal visual networks and socially engaged artists. I redefined
the characteristics of informal and professional visual production, based
on the distinctive and combined features that I consider to be relevant for
broad schooling contexts. As this process involves a globalization of characteristics,
I had to discard some of the specific individualities of the communities
I investigated. I focused most on the characteristics that shed a light
on what contemporary visual producers learn and how learning is taking
place. Table 11 clearly outlines that contemporary cultural producers operate
in different domains and have different ‘points of departure’. However, these
two apparently opposite artistic fields share many characteristics with
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regard to their learning and artistic production process. In particular, these
shared characteristics provide an opportunity to break the boundaries
between the school curriculum and art production in the ‘real world’.
Revising the design principles of authentic art education
The next step in my research entails the integration of the characteristics of
informal and professional visual production found with the design principles
of authentic art education. Table 12 shows how the design principles of
authentic art education are informed by the characteristics of the informal
and professional visual producers. To match the characteristics of contemporary
visual production with the original design principles of authentic art
education, I abandoned the categorization of Wenger’s community of practice
model. The overview in table 12 demonstrates that the characteristics I
defined have a capacity to complement and specify the existing design principles,
rather than to conflict with them. Almost all of the characteristics of
contemporary visual producers can be associated with the existing design
principles of authentic art education. Characteristics that are specific for
informal visual producers inform the principle Learning is aimed towards the
culture of the student; the characteristics of art professionals inform learning
is relevant to situations outside the school. The characteristics concerning
contemporary production processes can be associated with the design
principle knowledge is constructed in complete & complex task situations. The
characteristics with regard to how contemporary visual producers operate,
Informal:
Informal visual
networks
Shared characteristics
Proffesional:
Socially engaged art
practices
Domain
Personal work
inspired by
affinity spaces
within popular
culture
Inspiration is found in
contemporary society
Members feel and act as
experts around certain topics
and competences and
construct complex personal
(visual) languages and ideas
Conceptual art grounded in
critical reflection, politics
and activism
Community
Participants are part of
interactive, collaborative
practice
Critical exchange and joint
creation are important forms for
information sharing and peer
learning
Practice
Production is holistic,
interdisciplinary and longitudinal
Copying, sampling and
remixing are seen as part of
artistic processes
Table 11: Most significant similarities and differences between informal visual networks and socially engaged artists.a
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Characteristics of informal
and professional visual
producers
Original design principles
of authentic art education
Revised design principles
of authentic art education
– Informal producers:
personal work inspired
by affinity spaces within
popular culture
– Professional artists:
conceptual art grounded
in critical reflection,
politics and activism
– Inspiration is found in
contemporary society
– Production is holistic,
interdisciplinary and
longitudinal
a Learning is aimed towards
the culture of the student
– Learning takes account of
students’ prior knowledge
– Space is provided for
students’ own contributions,
interests and requirements
b Learning is relevant to
situations outside the
school
– Learning tasks are derived
from activities performed by
art professionals
c Knowledge is constructed
in complete & complex
task situations
– The assignments give
scope for students’ initiative
– The learning task is not
divided into small sub-tasks
a Learning is aimed towards
the culture of the student
– Learning takes account of
students’ affinity spaces
within popular culture
b Learning tasks are derived
from activities performed
by art professionals
– Learning examines
conceptual art grounded in
critical reflection, politics
and activism
c Learning is situated in
broad societal contexts
– Artistic production is
related to local and global
issues
d Knowledge is constructed
in complete & complex
task situations
– The assignments give
scope for students’
initiative, interests and
opinions
– Interdisciplinary production
and longitudinal artistic
research are stimulated
– The mastery of analogue &
digital techniques is
instrumental, rather than a
goal in itself
– Copying, sampling and
remixing are seen as part
of artistic processes
– Critical exchange and joint
creation are important
forms for information
sharing and peer learning
– Participants are part of
interactive, collaborative
practice
– Members feel and act as
experts around certain
topics and competences
and construct complex
personal (visual)
languages and ideas
d Communication and
cooperation play an
important role in the
learning process
– A significant part of the
education is carried out
in the form of group tasks
– Student consultation,
presentations and (peer)
evaluations are regular
features of the education
e The class operates as a
learning community in
which various forms of
expertise are shared.
– Collaborative production
and (online) interaction with
people outside the
classroom are encouraged
– Copying, sampling and
remixing are seen as part of
artistic processes
– Student consultation,
presentations and (peer)
evaluations are regular
features of the learning
process
Table 12: How characteristics of informal and professional visual producers inform the revised design principles
of authentic art education
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communicate and exchange knowledge can be related to the design principle
communication and cooperation play an important role in the learning process.
There is one exception: the characteristic that visual producers find
inspiration in contemporary societal developments outside the artistic field.
This characteristic is not represented by the original design principles of
authentic art education. The original design principles emphasize a connection
between ‘student worlds’ and ‘art worlds’, but more general local and
global issues are not explicitly considered to be influences on the educational
subject matter. Hence, the characteristic ‘inspiration is found in contemporary
society’ requires the formulation of a new design principle.
Table 12 displays how the revised design principles of authentic art
education are composed. The revised principles include the main components
of the original design principles of authentic art education, which I
updated and expanded with the relevant characteristics of contemporary
informal and professional visual producers. Design principle c is a new
addition, based on my conclusion that a connection to broad societal issues
was not represented in the original guidelines. As design principles a, b and
c are all about ‘relevant situations outside school’, I decided to delete that
formulation from the description of design principle b. The relationship
between relevant developments outside school and learning inside the
classroom are visualized in the new model. In the next sections, I will discuss
the underlying rationale for the revised design principles, and the way I
arranged them in a new model for authentic art education. I will discuss
my design decisions from two perspectives: the contents and the pedagogy
of authentic art education.
The contents of authentic art education
The characteristics of contemporary visual producers found enable me to
underpin authentic art education as a pedagogical concept that synthesizes
two prominent visions in contemporary art education: my research on
informal visual networks supports the view that popular media production
engages students in interest-driven, participatory, creative and critical
design activities (Jenkins et al., 2006; Kafai & Peppler, 2011). My research on
socially engaged artists adheres to the view of researchers like Zupancic
(2005), Page et al. (2006) and Adams (2012), who have argued that the study
and production of contemporary art can offer students chances, not only for
a better understanding of art, but also as an opportunity to study and discuss
‘real world’ social, ethical and political issues. Authentic art education
integrates these visions by acknowledging that both artworks and visual
cultural artifacts bear complex meanings that are embedded in larger sociocultural
contexts and by teaching students how to study and participate in
these cultural worlds. It recognizes popular visual culture and art as both
“the windows and mirrors of our lives” (Anderson, 2003, p. 59).
Furthermore, my empirical studies of actual visual practices
emphasize that the most logical connection between the students’ home art
and professional art is established through contemporary visual artifacts and
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emergent social issues: both informal art producers and professional artists
find their inspiration and motivation to produce visual forms not in art history
but in (mediated) everyday culture. This conclusion certainly does not
condemn art history as ‘unsuitable’ for authentic art education, but it does
support my view that historical themes and artworks gain relevance for students
if teachers establish a connection with contemporary culture.
Art educator Olivia Gude has argued that “students in a democratic
society need to be able to understand and participate in important cultural
conversations generated by the visual art, film, and other image making
practices” (Gude, 2007, p. 11). An authentic art curriculum adheres to this
view because it connects to contemporary visual culture and professional
art and incorporates the students’ reflection and opinions on a wide variety
of societal issues and non-art topics. However, this does not mean that I validate
authentic art education based on its possible effect on non-art school
subjects. In this respect I concur with Winner, Goldstein and Vincent-Lancrin
(2013), who discovered hardly any transfer effects of arts education in other
subject areas like the reading, writing and mathematics and on higher order
thinking skills. Based on their large-scale review study of empirical research
on the transfer effects of arts education, the researchers concluded that
“the primary justification of arts education should remain the intrinsic
importance of the arts and the related skills that they develop” (2013, p. 263).
Instead, I wish to emphasize that a relationship with broad socio-cultural
topics and skills is an intrinsic aspect of informal and professional art production
and thus intrinsic to contemporary authentic art education.
If art education is acknowledged as the study of a specific symbol system
to explore and imagine the world, then skills including thinking, creativity
and social competencies have to be understood as related to that domain
(Goodman (1978), as cited in Geahigan, 1992). Art education offers students
unique modes for cultural reflection and production, but these modes are
not isolated from other cultural fields and affiliated to school subjects like
philosophy, history and social studies (Van Heusden, 2012). Konings and Van
Heusden (2013) found that art educators often neglect the broad cultural
contexts in which art operates and the societal themes it addresses. In my
view, this deprives art education of the meaningful contents and contexts
that inspire and support visual production. The characteristics of contemporary
informal and professional visual production that I defined in this
dissertation indicate that artistic production outside schools is inextricably
bound up with non-art topics and skills. Therefore, the relevance for authentic
forms of art education is not dependent on the transferability of art-related
skills to other domains, but on the acknowledgement that an orientation
toward broad societal contexts is intrinsic to artistic production itself. If
contemporary art education wants to be authentic, it cannot neglect the
theoretical contextualization of art and popular culture in associated sociocultural
fields and the development of related skills including critical thinking,
creativity and social competencies. This interpretation of authentic art
education is corroborated by other scholars who understand the reception
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and production of art as a cognitive endeavor (Davis & Gardner, 1992; Efland,
2002; Parsons, 1987).
The visual model I propose for the subject matter of authentic art
education is built on three interacting design principles: Learning is aimed
towards the culture of the student; learning tasks are derived from activities
performed by art professionals; and learning is situated in broad societal
contexts. These principles are organized as a Venn diagram (figure 26) in which
each field represents a dimension of the ‘out of school world’ that informs
the learning contents of authentic art education. The representation of
curriculum as three dialectic domains traces back to the ideas of Dewey
(1902) and Tyler (1949), who have argued that curriculum objectives should
be obtained from three main sources: the learner, specialized knowledge and
society (Deng & Luke, 2008). The upper two dimensions of the Venn diagram
were already part of the original design principles of authentic learning;
the third dimension is a new addition.
The circle on the left (a) represents the domain of the learner: the
informal art world of the student. This is the domain of popular culture
in which students form different affinity spaces around mass media and
subcultures. The circle on the right (b) represents the world of professional
art, which can be specified as a domain in which artists produce conceptual
art grounded in critical reflection, politics and activism. To achieve
a connection between the world of the learner and discipline-specific
knowledge, the authentic art curriculum should include content from
affinnity
spaces in
popular
culture
professional
art
practice
a: Learning is aimed
towards the culture
of the student
Meaningful connections
between professional
art, popular culture and
societal issues
b: Learning tasks
are derived from
activities performed
by art professionals
local and
global issues
c: Learning is situated in
broad societal contexts
Figure 26: Tentative model for the subject matter of authentic art education
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both the domain of popular culture and the professional art world. Works
and issues from the popular domain could be discussed in relation to the
professional art domain and vice versa, either initiated by the teacher or
the students. Professional artworks that are influenced by, reflect on, or
operate in popular culture are regarded as intermediate works, because
they grasp both the popular and the professional dimension of the model.
A good example of such work is the oeuvre of artists like The Propeller
Group, Aram Bartholl and Evan Roth, who were discussed in chapter 5.
These artists operate in the context of autonomous art, but their work is
visually and thematically largely influenced by games, Internet culture,
pop music and advertising. Although most students will probably not be
familiar with this work, it is accessible because it refers to a world that they
are acquainted with.
The circle at the bottom of the diagram (c) represents the broad
societal contexts in which popular culture and professional art are situated
and the local and global issues that inspire them. The addition of this third
domain reflects my research findings, which indicate that present-day visual
production is inspired by contemporary societal issues. The third circle is
true to Anderson and Milbrandt’s view that a curriculum connecting to contemporary
informal and professional art would incorporate a wide variety
of societal issues and concerns. By adding the domain of local and global
issues as a third dimension, authentic art education is not only presented
as a discursive and reflective curriculum but also as a thematic curriculum.
Various media or art disciplines like painting, sculpture or ceramics would
typically structure a traditional art curriculum, whereas an authentic curriculum
is more likely to be designed around the different (societal) themes
that are embedded in works of art and popular visual culture. This does
not imply that art is used as a means to illustrate social themes, like the
pictures in a social studies handbook. Themes provide a conceptual and
contextual framework that is explored through the study and production
of visual culture and art: “themes steer, but art drives” (Anderson &
Milbrandt, 2005, p. 171).
I submit that the central area in the Venn diagram represents the
ideal space for authentic art education. This is where the three circles
overlap, representing a learning program that strives for meaningful connections
between subject matter that is related to professional art, popular
culture and local and global issues. The word ‘meaningful’ is key, because it
implies that the connections between the three domains should be based
on real world, interrelated subject matter and not on an assembly of isolated
sources, held together by an arbitrary theme that is relevant primarily
in the context of the school. It is the educator’s task to create significant,
research-based production environments allowing students to respond
to contemporary topical issues (whether remote or nearby) that transpire
from the arts. The Venn diagram also symbolizes the subject matter of
authentic art education as a continuum, formed by three interacting
domains. The central area is the ideal learning situation, in which the
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
three domains are equally represented and important. In reality it is more
likely that one of the three domains is less dominant than the others,
depending on the theme, the sources and the task. If the assignment is based
on an art history theme, the professional art world and its societal context
are probably more prominent than the world of popular culture. If students
study popular remixed imagery from the Internet, the professional art
world will be less influential than the other two. The point is that the model
challenges art educators to strive for connections in the middle area: the art
history task would become more meaningful when students also discuss
related scenes from a popular historical movie; the remix-assignment would
Subject matter:
affinnity
spaces in
popular
culture
professional
art
practice
a: Learning is aimed
towards the culture
of the student
Meaningful connections
between professional
art, popular culture and
societal issues
b: Learning tasks
are derived from
activities performed
by art professionals
local and
global issues
c: Learning is situated in
broad societal contexts
Pedagogy:
d: Knowledge is constructed in complete
and complex task situations
– The assignments give scope for
students’ initiative, interests and
opinions
– Interdisciplinary production and
longitudinal artistic research are
stimulated
– The mastery of analogue & digital
techniques is instrumental, rather
than a goal in itself
e: The class operates as a learning
community in which various forms of
expertise are shared
– Collaborative production and (online)
interaction with people outside the
classroom are encouraged
– Copying, sampling and remixing are
seen as part of artistic processes
– Student consultation, presentations
and (peer) evaluations are regular
features of the learning process
Figure 27:Tentative model for the subject matter and pedagogy of authentic art education
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become more ‘artistic’ when students study sampling and appropriation in
the professional arts.
Now that I have described how the model addresses the subject
matter of authentic art education, I will discuss its pedagogical aspects.
The design principles for the pedagogy of authentic art education are an
operationalization of the central section of the content model, which
explains how teachers and students act to establish and maintain a learning
community that strives for meaningful connections between professional
art, popular culture and local and global issues.
Pedagogical principles of authentic art education
The characteristics of informal and professional art communities that I
defined also inform the pedagogical aspects of the model of authentic art
education. Figure 27 shows how I formulated the design principles for the
pedagogy of authentic art education and the guidelines that support them.
I maintained the design principle: knowledge is constructed in complete and
complex task situations, which I operationalized by formulating guidelines
that address the space for the students’ initiative; interdisciplinary production
and artistic research; and the role of artistic technique. The design
principle: the class operates as a learning community in which various forms
of expertise are shared is a new formulation of the existing principle that
addressed the role of communication and cooperation. The phrase ‘learning
community’ is derived from Wenger (1998) and adopts aspects of communities
of practice into formal learning environments. These aspects include
the classroom being seen as an environment in which different forms of
expertise, including that of the teacher, are mutually shared, and that
articulates participation inside with participation outside the educational
institution. Describing the ideal environment for authentic learning as a
learning community enables me to combine the existing guidelines
regarding communication and cooperation in the classroom with the
characteristics regarding identity formation, group interaction and collaborative
learning that I retrieved from the informal and professional communities.
I will discuss both the confirmed and newly added guidelines
below, underpinned with the data I collected among contemporary visual
producers and with relevant additional literature.
Knowledge is constructed in complete and complex task situations
Authentic task situations are typically complete (ill-structured) and complex
(ill-defined). They are considered to be complete when they are not divided
into small sub-tasks, and they are complex when they give scope for
students’ initiative and exploration via divergent assignments, global guidelines
and global criteria (Haanstra, 2001; Roelofs & Houtveen, 1999). This
design principle is supported by the data that I retrieved during this study:
informal and professional art producers learn holistically because their
motivation is aimed at production, not at the learning process itself. The
intention to produce art steers complex learning processes that entail artistic
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research, planning, decision-making, cooperation and reflection. These and
other art-related competences are not learned via well-defined, isolated
sub-tasks, but are always related to and embedded in the larger enterprise
to produce art.
Haanstra (2001) underlines that task situations are considered
authentic when their origin and solution are accepted in the professional
domain. This guideline reflects a condition for authentic learning that
Newmann and colleagues have termed disciplined inquiry; ‘‘the kinds of mastery
demonstrated by successful scientists, musicians, entrepreneurs, politicians,
craftspeople, attorneys, novelists, nurses, and designers” (Newmann,
Marks, & Gamoran, 1996, p. 282). Learning tasks based on disciplined inquiry
require that the student operates in a manner as exemplified by professionals
of the discipline (Gardner, 1991; Splitter, 2009), which in respect to art
education involves students learning to think and act as artists, designers
and art critics. My collected data show that professional artists develop a
more conceptual, critical approach towards art and society than informal
art producers. This means that if authentic task situations want to meet the
condition for disciplined inquiry, they should be designed in such a way that
they reinforce conceptual and critical competencies. Art educators face the
difficult task of designing authentic tasks that both provide a space for the
students’ fascinations and opinions, and challenge students to work and
think as conceptual, critical art practitioners. Such tasks allow students to
learn through the negation of the differences between personal and professional
perspectives. Disciplined inquiry in authentic art education is not
aimed at training students to be art professionals, but enables students to
experience how art works through immersion, identification and confrontation.
This entails that students operate as artists and critics during the
learning process. Roles that are directly derived from functions in the professional
art world. The design principle knowledge is constructed in complete
and complex task situations is supported by three additional guidelines.
These guidelines are discussed below.
The assignments give scope for students’ initiative, interests and opinions.
This guideline is based on an existing principle of authentic learning and is
further sustained by the results of my study on informal visual networks. My
data indicate that students have a desire to learn about visual culture forms
not included in a traditional art curriculum. In today’s society, young people
develop their personal affinity spaces based on participation in various
forms of visual culture. Students develop expertise and artistic preferences
based on specific areas of interest, most often visually influenced by popular
culture. Their cultural production is not aimed solely at artistic development,
but it is also fuelled by an urge to communicate or to explore certain
problems or interests. The spontaneous art producers I studied are proof
that visual production around self-chosen subjects and forms contributes to
the development of art concepts and art-related skills. I argue that connection
to these informal forms of visual production in school can motivate
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students to elaborate on their personal interests and fascinations, which
lowers the barrier to more complex or unknown forms of art. It opens
opportunities for the development of cultural sensitivity by challenging
students to criticize familiar visual cultures and to seek similarities with
unknown cultural artifacts. In other words: to make the familiar strange
and the strange familiar (Buckingham, 2003; Groenendijk et al., 2012).
Interdisciplinary production and longitudinal artistic research are stimulated.
This guideline is derived from data indicating that informal art producers
and artists alike mix a variety of media and art disciplines to produce personal
work. The rise of easily accessible multimedia technology has made
a huge contribution to this development and stimulates the ‘remixing’ of
existing arts disciplines (Manovich, 2006). Contemporary art is not driven
by medium, but by concept, and concepts are developed through longitudinal
artistic research. There is a tendency among artists to embark on longterm
research-oriented projects that produce a series of events and products
rather than a single art object. Work that young people produce outside
school typically draws on a long-term fascination and immersion in a single,
particular subject. Creative production and critical reflection are parallel
and reciprocal processes in art, which are stimulated in an inquiry-based
curriculum (Freedman & Stuhr, 2004). This calls for a process-based pedagogy
that acknowledges artistic processes as equally important as final
products and that recognizes an interchange with different arts disciplines
and social contexts as inherent to contemporary artistic research. Final
products are seen as temporary stages in an ongoing artistic and learning
process (Groenendijk et al., 2012). Teachers in an authentic curriculum strive
for long-term assignments and try to avoid lessons that are fragmented into
a traditional school timetable; they stimulate interaction with other arts
disciplines and other subjects at school.
The mastery of analogue & digital techniques is instrumental, rather than a goal
in itself.
This guideline is a logical continuation of the former one: contemporary visual
producers generally learn media and techniques as part of the creative
process, driven by the urge to make meaningful work. Technical skills can
increase the potential for creative expression, but learning processes
become less significant when technical improvement and the development
of ideas are detached from each other (Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005). I argue
that conceptual development can both include and reinforce the advancement
of media skills. Traditionally, art education often embarks from the
isolated acquisition of techniques and skills, with students only experimenting
with creating personally meaningful work in later years (Gude, 2013).
Such pedagogies reduce learning art to an aesthetic endeavor and diminish
opportunities for students to experience art as meaningful with regard to
their lives. I agree with Freedman (2003) who has proposed turning this
approach to curriculum upside down: pay a lot attention to art as a way to
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explore and reflect culture among younger students and gradually offer more
support for the development of specific technical skills when they reach the
higher levels of secondary school. The improvement of specialist artistic techniques
is more relevant for students who understand what art is about and
who know how to link those skills to their personal, artistic concepts.
The class operates as a learning community in which various forms of
expertise are shared
This design principle is a revised version of the design principle that was formulated
as: communication and cooperation play an important role in the learning
process (Haanstra, 2001; Roelofs & Houtveen, 1999). The new formulation
of this design principle integrates aspects of communities of practice with
formal learning environments (Wenger, 1998). A class is not a community of
practice (CoP), but it can incorporate some of its most powerful pedagogical
characteristics in order to establish a community of learners. This requires
that learning in class be presented as a mutual enterprise that requires the
engagement and contribution of individual participants as representatives
of various CoP (Wenger, 1998, 2009).
A student growing up in a visually saturated world cannot be seen
as a clean slate regarding visual and art related knowledge, neither can the
school claim a monopoly on learning through art. Students can become
experts on certain art-related topics and competences, and are capable of
constructing complex personal languages and ideas without a formal art
curriculum. As authentic pedagogy wants to articulate learning inside
school with participation outside, teachers should acknowledge their students’
ideas, expertise, and skills as important resources for individual and
group learning. This entails that the educator treats the class as productive
community that shares inherent knowledge, demanding a flexible role for
both teachers and learners. To allow students to take authentic roles as
artists and critics, they should also be stimulated to operate as cooperative
team members with different forms of expertise. The same flexibility applies
for the pedagogical roles of the teacher. The teacher is not only an educational
designer, expert and coach, but has to be able to take the role of a colearner:
he is receptive to student knowledge, interests and opinions. The
establishment of a learning community is reinforced when teachers present
themselves as members of relevant CoP’s, rather than only as representatives
of the school. I agree with Wenger who argued that: “ […] being an
active practitioner with an authentic form of participation might be one of
the most deeply essential requirements for teaching” (1998, p. 276). Research
in authentic art education acknowledges positive learner effects when the
teacher is also a practitioner in the arts (Bremmer & Huisingh, 2009;
Hoekstra, 2009, 2010). Teachers should not hide their identities as an artist,
film club member or Neil Young fan, but they are encouraged to share those
identities as educational resources in class. I have formulated three additional
guidelines for the establishment of learning communities:
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Collaborative production and (online) interaction with people outside the
classroom is encouraged.
This guideline is both rooted in social-constructivist learning theory and
based on the data I retrieved from informal and professional visual producers.
The incorporation of group tasks as regular features of authentic arts
education is rooted in social-constructivist learning research, which
indicates that learning through co-construction can contribute to the motivation
and social skills of students, stimulates creative problem solving and
builds deeper forms of understanding (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 2007;
Teurlings, Van Wolput, & Vermeulen, 2006; Williams & Sheridan, 2010).
Haanstra (2011) has argued that the application of collaborative learning is
more evident in relation to the inherent social practices of the performing
arts than in field of visual art. However, my research among informal and
professional art producers suggests that contemporary visual production
is much less an individualistic endeavor than how it is represented in the
traditional art class. Art education is traditionally based on individual
expression and one-to-one teacher supervision, but the pedagogical role
model of the artist as a non-conformist solitary genius seems to have passed
- if indeed it ever truly existed (Becker, 1982/2008; Gielen & De Bruyne, 2009;
Lind, 2007; Sawyer, 2007). Informal visual producers use networks and collaborative
productions to share expertise and experiences and to utilize
various skills. Professional artists have stated that joint creation intensifies
their artistic production, enables interdisciplinary production and contributes
to the quality of their work. Pluta, Richards, and Mutnick (2013, p. S9)
have argued that “the rate of adoption of collaborative learning methods
will accelerate due to a growing emphasis on the development of team
competencies and the increasing availability of digital media”.
Collaboration beyond the classroom may offer opportunities to push the
boundaries between a learning community and real world CoP’s, and could
enable students to establish interactive relationships with people with different
backgrounds, ages and expertise than are available in class. On and
offline collaborative interaction increases opportunities for multicultural
learning, as it increases the cultural diversity of the learning community
(Järvelä, Volet, & Järvenoja, 2010).
Copying, sampling and remixing are seen as part of artistic processes.
This new guideline is directly related to how visual information is produced
and shared in a digital, globalized society. Selection is seen as a key activity
in contemporary image production (Bishop, 2012b). The search for and
recycling of existing imagery and audio material plays an important role in
the practice of contemporary artists, and it is also a prominent feature in
informal artistic production by young people and amateurs. The availability
of the Internet (a digital archive) and digital technology (sample and remix
tools) are important stimuli for these developments. The phrase ‘original
work’ is relative when you consider the enormous amounts of visual examples
that surround people growing up in today’s society (Haanstra, 2008).
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Art educators are advised to allow appropriation in class by acknowledging
it as a fully accepted method in professional art and as a tried-and-tested
approach in the domain of popular culture. Furthermore, research among
children and informal cultural producers (Duncum, 1988; Green, 2008;
Manifold, 2009; Smith, 1985) has shown that imitation can have a pedagogical
value as point of departure towards innovative and personal artistic
production. Therefore, I consider appropriation not merely as an artistic
method but as a significant pedagogical issue related to the notion that
artistic production is intrinsically collaborative in the sense that we ‘build
on the shoulders of others’.
Student consultation, presentations and (peer) evaluations are regular features
of the learning process.
This guideline was already a key component of authentic learning, which
entails that teachers establish different forms of collaborative critical
reflection. These reflective group processes are mirrored in the practices of
informal and professional art producers who share information and learn
from each other through the joint creation of work and critical exchange.
Joint creation elicits reflective dialogues around activities like brainstorming,
production and the evaluation of personal work. Critical exchange
among art producers transpires in the context of their production and
includes the analysis of and feedback on the work of others and various
forms of group discussion. That these forms of reflection occur in real-world
practices does not necessarily mean that they emerge spontaneously in
formal learning communities. The teacher has an important role as a facilitator,
coach and assessor who supervises various forms of critical (peer)
reflection. This role can potentially strengthen the learning community
because students learn to articulate learning effects by thoughtfully
abstracting knowledge in relation to prior understanding.
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Conclusion
This chapter provides an answer to the research question: how can the
characteristics of contemporary informal and professional communities of practice
inform a pedagogical model for contemporary authentic art education? I first
collected the main differences and similarities between the characteristics
of contemporary informal and professional visual producers. This comparison
indicated that, although informal and professional visual producers
operate in distinctive domains and have different goals, there are notable
resemblances in relation to their inspiration, expertise, collaborative forms
of learning and their methods of artistic production. The members of the
studied communities learn about the visual arts through contemporary subjects
that they identify or engage with, using holistic, interdisciplinary and
longitudinal production methods and collaborative, interactive forms of
learning. These characteristics of contemporary visual production underline
the anachronistic nature of traditional art education. Traditional art
curricula are based on individual creative processes and tend to strip formal
art education from this contemporary, social, moral and political content,
thus limiting the possibilities for students to experience art as a site for
social discussion and personal engagement. Many of these aspects are fundamentally
opposed to the characteristics of contemporary visual production
that I defined.
The characteristics of contemporary visual production that I
defined enabled me to expand and revise the original design principles of
authentic art education. The most prominent supplement to the existing
principles was the introduction of a new principle that directs that authentic
art education is situated in broad societal contexts. An authentic art curriculum
deals not only with popular culture and professional art, but also
with the social contexts in which these practices are formed and the issues
that visual producers discuss. This addition permits the contextualization
of art and popular culture in associated societal fields, acknowledges nonart
knowledge and skills as related to art education, and emphasizes the
operationalization of authentic art education as a discursive, reflective
and thematic curriculum.
I arranged the revised design principles into a graphic model with
supporting guidelines for each of its dimensions. The model positions the
curriculum for authentic art education in a space shaped by three overlapping
and interacting domains, in which teachers and students form meaningful
connections between professional art, popular culture and societal
issues. Learning is reinforced by the formulation of complex and complete
assignments that give scope for the students’ initiative, interests and opinions;
that stimulate interdisciplinary production and longitudinal artistic
research; and in which the creative, conceptual and technical development
of students are parallel processes. Class and teachers operate as a learning
community: a community in which both teachers and students can acts as
experts and learners; that encourages collaborative production and interaction
with people outside the classroom; that allows students to sample and
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remix work from others; and in which student consultation, presentations
and (peer) evaluations are regular features of the learning process.
In my research so far I have attempted to bring together ideas
regarding authentic learning with the characteristics of contemporary visual
production in order to design a model that is more specific and detailed
about the components of authentic art education. The original design
principles of authentic art education were aimed at all forms of education
in the arts, whereas the new model is generally aimed at the visual art
disciplines. The new model also stimulates interdisciplinary art production
and interaction with other (arts) disciplines, but it is rooted in the practices
of contemporary visual producers. Another difference is that the original
design principles offered little support for the design of content matter in
authentic learning arrangements. The new model is more explicit about
how curricula for authentic art education can be constructed, with regard
to both subject matter and pedagogy. My model aims to offer more guidance
for educational designers and teachers, while maintaining the open character
of the original model for authentic art education. It envisages the establishment
of an authentic art curriculum in the form of dimensions and
characteristics, without reducing it to a linear procedure or a design manual.
Because my newly developed model and the accompanying guidelines
aim to support teachers when designing and implementing authentic
art education in practice, the next phase of Remixing the Art Curriculum will
focus on the evaluation of the model. In the prototyping and assessment
phase of my research project, the model will be examined in the local practices
of fifteen different art teachers. The participating teachers develop and
execute lesson designs based on the model, and I will analyze the implications
of this intervention among students and their teachers. The design
principles that constitute this model function as hypotheses that are tested
in practical settings during the following prototyping and assessment phase.
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A New Model for Authentic Art Education
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INVEST
APP
Remixing the Art Curriculum
IDENTIF
PROTOTYP
ASS
REF
S
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How Contemporary Visual Practises Inspire Authentic Art Education
ICATION
IGATION
ING AND
ESSMENT
LECTION
phase
UMMARY
ENDIXES
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7
Prototyping and
Assessment:
introduction
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The investigation phase aimed at establishing a revised educational
framework for authentic art education. In the prototyping and assessment
phase I will examine how the underlying design principles
‘work’ for teachers and their students. The following chapters analyze
how different art educators applied the design principles of
authentic art education to designing courses, which they subsequently
implemented in their local teaching practices. The design
process, the implementation and the results of the educational intervention
are investigated through various research methods, which
are described in this introductory chapter.
The subsequent chapters analyze educational design processes by art
teachers and the implications of teacher-designed authentic art education
courses in different local school contexts. Because all the lessons are based
on the educational model I developed, the interventions enable me to evaluate
the design principles of authentic art education in schooling contexts.
These are the main design principles of authentic art education, as I formulated
them in chapter 6:
a. Learning is aimed towards the culture of the student;
b. Learning tasks are derived from activities performed by art
professionals;
c. Learning is situated in broad societal contexts;
d. Knowledge is constructed in complete and complex task situations;
e. The class operates as a learning community in which various forms
of expertise are shared.
The principle aim of the prototyping and assessment phase is
twofold: I want to examine to what extent my educational model shapes
the subject matter and pedagogy of contemporary art education at a local
level, and I use this analysis to explore the design principles of authentic art
education at a general level. This approach follows a basic assumption of
design-based research, which was formulated by Barab and Squire (2004,
p. 6): “In contrast to other methods focused on producing theory, the most
radical shift proposed by design researchers may be the requirement that
inquiry involves producing demonstrable changes at the local level”. The
results of these empirical studies may clarify how theoretical principles are
related to practical processes, which contributes to the design process of my
educational model and adds experiential substance to the design principles
of authentic art education.
The main research questions for the prototyping and assessment
phase are:
– How do art teachers translate the revised design principles of
authentic art education into courses and how do they perceive this
design process?
– What is the impact of the teacher-designed lessons on school practice
and which learning effects do teachers and their students perceive?
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Methodology
Research design
As my educational model is intended to guide both the educational design
and the implementation of authentic art education, this study analyzes two
stages of the intervention: the prototyping phase is the first stage, in which
a group of art educators designed an art course for their curriculum. In the
second stage, the assessment phase, this course was implemented and evaluated
with different research methods.
The prototyping phase relates to the period in which different art
teachers designed a course based on my model for authentic art education.
To stimulate peer exchange during the design process an international
summer school was set up in Amsterdam (appendix 1). Over the course of
six days, a varied group of 25 art teachers was introduced to this research
project and familiarized itself with the backgrounds and design principles
of authentic art education. As the summer school progressed, participants
developed a blueprint for a course that fits the needs of their local curriculum,
based on my model for authentic art education. The iterative course
design process was reinforced through peer review sessions during the summer
school and an expert panel review at the end of the six-day program.
This approach towards educational design is derived from Nieveen (2009),
who has suggested that preliminary versions of an educational intervention
can be developed in the form of prototypes that are refined through iterative
cycles of formative evaluation within the design team. After the summer
school, participants used their final blueprint as a basis to develop a complete
written course design, which was implemented in their art educational
practice. I evaluated the prototyping phase through observations during
peer review sessions, a review of the expert appraisal, an analysis of the lesson
plans and interviews with the teachers involved.
The assessment phase involved the implementation of the teacherdesigned
courses in their educational practices. Fifteen different courses
were implemented in varied local practices between September 2012 and
July 2013, for the main part in the Netherlands. Three of the courses were
implemented at the level of higher education; the rest were executed at the
level of secondary education. I studied the implementation process and the
perceived effects of the course through interviews with the teachers and
learner reports among their students. Throughout the study, I will use the
phrase ‘course’ to refer to the fifteen different cases that were studied. Each
course includes an implemented and evaluated course, a location where the
course was executed, the teachers who developed and implemented the
course, and the students who participated in the course.
Research instruments and supporting data
Three different research instruments were used to investigate the prototyping
and assessment phase of this study: observations, interviews and learner
reports (a-c). The participants’ written course plans and the students’ final
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products that I collected functioned as supporting data (d-e). Below, I will
describe each instrument and the additional data sets as they were applied
in this study.
a. Observations during the summer school
During the summer school, participants developed a blueprint for a course
based on the model of authentic art education. Working in pairs, participants
operated as small educational design teams that interacted with peers
and coaches during design seminars. I observed the discussions during
these design seminars using an open participant observation method in
which I took the field role of a participant-as-observer (Gill & Johnson, 2002).
This role entailed that I joined the discussions, but participants were aware
that I participated in the design seminars as a researcher, rather than as a
co-learner or a teacher. I offered participants hands-on explanations of how
the model of authentic art education was intended to function, but I tried
not to interfere with their selection of subject matter and pedagogical
forms. I used an unstructured observational protocol and plain recording
sheet (Lodico, Spaulding, & Voegtle, 2006) that was based on the design principles
of art education, which enabled me to make descriptive and reflective
field notes of the main issues and themes that were discussed.
Besides my observations during the design seminars, I organized
an expert panel review session as an additional formative research instrument.
On the last day of the summer school, the participants presented
their intermediate course plans in the form of visualized blueprints, receiving
verbal feedback from a panel of experts in art education. This session
offered the participating teachers critical remarks and tips, aiding the
development of their blueprints into full courses in the period after the
summer school. The observational notes and the audio-recorded expert
reviews were analyzed in the context of the course blueprints and will be
discussed in this chapter.
b. Semi-structured interviews
Immediately after their self-designed course ended, each teacher was interviewed
by the researcher, either on location or with use of online conference
software for remote interviews. Each interview lasted 1.5 hours on average
and was guided by a list of topics. The interviews were conducted in Dutch,
except for the interviews with the participants from Italy and Hungary,
which were conducted in English. All of the interviews were audio-recorded
and transcribed verbatim.
The semi-structured interviews were designed as a topic guide with
key issues and sub topics. A topic guide has the capacity to enhance the consistency
of an in-depth interview without entirely restricting its reflective
and exploratory nature (Arthur & Nazroo, 2003). The topics were formulated
as open questions or propositions that stimulated teachers to elaborate on
issues that they considered important. The interviews were divided into
three sections. The first section examined the educational design process
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and contained questions that were related to how teachers experienced the
design process and how they applied the model for authentic art education
to their course. The second section evaluated the implementation process
and contained questions that were related to how teachers experienced the
execution of the course and how they perceived the response and the results
of the students during the course. The third section explored the relationship
between this intervention and the model for authentic art education.
Questions in this section were related to how teachers perceived the influence
of the model on their pedagogy and the students’ learning processes.
The complete interview design is shown in appendix 2.
The fifteen interviews were jointly analyzed through the method
of thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), which enables the researcher
to identify and analyze patterns or themes in a data set. I analyzed the transcribed
interview data through an inductive approach towards thematic
analysis, which entails that themes were not defined a priori but determined
on the basis of repeated patterns of meaning found across the
different cases. In the first phase, all the interviews were uploaded to the
qualitative analysis application HyperResearch (version 3.5.2) and coherent
text sections were labeled with initial codes. In the next phase, I identified
meta codes or pattern codes (Miles & Huberman, 1994), by sorting, combining
and redefining the initial codes under broader themes, aided by my
research questions and the design principles of authentic art education.
The final themes and codes were hierarchically ordered in the form of a
code tree (appendix 3), and then thematically analyzed and discussed.
c. Learner reports
Out of approximately 400 participants in the various courses, 302 students
filled out a questionnaire that investigated their perceived learning results
after the educational intervention. The first part of the questionnaire had
an inductive character and was designed as a learner report with open questions.
The second part of the questionnaire had a deductive character and
consisted of a list of closed-ended questions. Most questionnaires were
World
Self
Learning rules
(Universal)
A
Rules of the world: answers
and methods
Testable or demonstrable
C
Rules regarding myself:
capacities and limitations
Communicable
Learning
exceptions
(Existential)
B
Surprises of the world:
exceptions
Reportable
D
Surprises regarding myself:
exceptions to preconceptions
Communicable
Figure 28: Classification of learning objectives (De Groot, 1980a, p. 2.3 Gro. B10; Van Kesteren, 1993, p. 67)
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
conducted in the Dutch language, a Hungarian version was made for the
students from Hungary and a version in English was made for the students
in Italy. The use of learner reports in this study allowed me to analyze the
perceived learning effects of the student in relation to the principles of
authentic learning and to triangulate these data with the formal learning
results (student products) and the learning effects as perceived by the
teachers involved.
A learner report is a research instrument that was introduced by
De Groot (1980b) and operationalized in the context of arts education by
several Dutch researchers including Van der Kamp (1980), Janssen (1998),
Van Meurs (2008) and Groenendijk (2012). Learner reports are intended to
explore the learning effects that are perceived by the students, including
their attitudes and skills. De Groot (1980b) has argued that objective
educational measurement is often unable to identify all the types of
knowledge, attitudes and skills that students develop during a course.
According to De Groot, complex learning effects are not sufficiently represented
as ‘terminal behaviors’, but rather as mentally stored programs at
the disposal of the student (Janssen, 1998). Learner reports allow learners
to reflect on fundamental learning experiences, including the ones that are
considered indemonstrable or immeasurable (Van Roozendaal et al., 2009).
De Groot stated that students must never be manipulated, which entails that
schools should never strive to teach students ‘learned behaviors’ that they do
not know about, that they do not understand and that they cannot control
(1980b, p. 2.3 Gro. A16). The typical open format of a learner report permits students
to report about learning results that were not articulated, not intended
or were even undesired by the teacher. As such, learner reports have the capacity
to provide valuable information in program evaluations, in addition to
more formal forms of assessment and evaluation. Learner reports and other
forms of self-assessment acknowledge learners as experts on their own learning
processes (Van der Kamp, 2006), which attunes with social-constructivist
approaches to learning like authentic art education.
The design of the learner reports in this study is based on De Groot’s
original classification of learning objectives, as shown in figure 28. I operationalized
these categories as four open-ended questions with example sentences
that students can choose to complete. These examples are formulated as: “I
have noticed that…”, “I have learned that…”, or “I have learned how…”. The layout
with four pre-printed answer fields challenges the participants to formulate
more than one answer. Literature has shown that the instructions of learner
reports can be too difficult for students (Van Kesteren, 1993), and to address
that problem I added one additional open question to generate additional
learner responses: “Was this course different from the usual courses in this subject?”
This question is intended to reveal whether and why students perceived
the course as innovative, and was inspired by a similar developmental study
by Groenendijk et al. (2012).
The second part of the learner report was aimed at investigating the
influence of the design principles of authentic art education on the learning
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experiences of the student. As this part of the questionnaire was designed to
deduct specific learning themes among the students, I selected a closed form.
This section of the learner report was designed as a list of 20 statements
about learning experiences, derived from the model for authentic art education.
Each of the model’s design principles and guidelines is represented by a
learning statement in the questionnaire. For example, the design principle
learning is situated in broad societal contexts was operationalized as “I have
learned about issues outside the arts during this course”. To improve the reliability
of the questionnaire, I aimed to formulate at least two different items
that refer to the same design principle or guideline. For instance, the guideline
longitudinal artistic research is stimulated was operationalized as “I did
research during this course” and as “I tried out different ideas during this
course”. After all the statements were formulated, their order was randomized
in the final version of the questionnaire. The participating students
should score each statement on a five point Likert scale, including a neutral
option. To prevent an influence of the second questionnaire on the learner
reports, participants only received the closed-ended questions after they had
handed in the completed open-ended questionnaire. The complete design of
the learner report is shown in appendix 4.
d. Supporting data: written course plans
All of the participating teachers produced a written course plan that
described the goals, subject matter and pedagogical structure of their course.
I collected these plans together with the blueprints that preceded them,
which provided me with additional information that supported the analysis
of the interviews and the learner reports. The course plans were also used for
the short course descriptions in this chapter.
e. Supporting data: student work
All of the developed courses contained a central assignment that was aimed
at the creation of a final art work by the students. Each of the participating
teachers was asked to select nine final products out of every course: three
works that were classified as good, three works with an average grade and
three works that were classified as below average or unsatisfactory. I collected
these final works to gain more insight in the implementation process, in support
of the evaluations with the teachers and the students involved. Examples
of the students’ works were also used to illustrate the course descriptions.
Selection process and generalization
The aim of the summer school that opened the prototyping phase of this
study was twofold. First, the online application process of the summer
school provided opportunities to select a varied group of research participants
representing different local contexts and levels in art education. Its
second aim was to introduce art educators to the concept of authentic art
edu cation and to offer them professional guidance and feedback during the
proto typing phase of the educational design process. The summer school
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Course
title
1 Teach me
how to
Dougie
2 Media
Culture
in the
Picture
3 Remix
the
Music
Video
Complex
assignment
Make a Youtube
tutorial about
something you are
good at.
Use artistic and
theoretical research
methods to form your
opinion about a
theme in our
mediatized society
and present the
results in an
audiovisual form.
Create your own
music video in which
the visual code of
one genre is mixed
with the music of
another genre.
4 Advertism Choose a billboard in
public space and alter
its visual appearance
in such a manner that
it expresses your
critique on the product.
5 A Matter
of Time
and
Space
6 Redesign
Your Hub
7 Hack
Your
Hood
8 Transformation
Give a new meaning
to an existing
location or place
through a spatial
intervention.
Create a new design
for a hub that is
important to you.
Devise a playful
intervention that can
make your neighborhood
a better, more
positive place and
create a media
campaign in order
to convince your
class about it.
Create an alter ego by
transforming your
photographical portrait.
9 Kritisign Create an artwork
that discusses a
contemporary issue
by recontextualizing
existing elements of
visual culture.
School In Partner
institute
Nova
College
Calsbeek
College
Etty
Hillesum
Lyceum
Theater
Havo
Spinoza
Lyceum,
Fons Vitae
Lyceum,
Haarlemmer
Lyceum
Katholieke
Scholengemeenschap
Hoofddorp
Zöld Kakas
Líceum
Damstede
Haags
Montessori
Lyceum
Amsterdam
(NL)
Woerden
(NL)
Deventer
(NL)
Rotterdam
(NL)
Amsterdam
and
Haarlem
(NL)
Hoofddorp
(NL)
Budapest
(HU)
Amsterdam
(NL)
The Hague
(NL)
Stedelijk
Museum
Amsterdam
W139
Art
Space
Filmhuis
Den
Haag
Average
student
age
Educational
level
14 Lower
General
Secondary
Education
14
16 Higher
General
Secondary
Education
15
16
16
17 Higher
General
Secondary
and
Pre-
University
Education
13
15
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Course
title
Complex
assignment
10 Re:Icon Recontextualize the
popular depiction of
an iconic person.
11 Special
Cases
12 Crack
the Code
13 Multimedia
Design
for
Education
14 Hack
Gender
Stereotypes
Create a short
documentary about
an unusual local story
or person.
Reflect or comment
on the conventions in
pop music by
remixing existing
music videos.
Appropriate an
artwork from the
MAMbo collection to
design an educational
video aimed at
a pre-defined target
audience.
Use remix-logic as a
research tool to hack
gender stereotypes.
School In Partner
institute
Farel
College
Lyceum aan
Zee
Christelijk
College De
Populier
Accademia
di Belle Arti
di Bologna
Willem de
Kooning
Academie
Amersfoort
(NL)
Den Helder
(NL)
The Hague
(NL)
Bologna
(IT)
Rotterdam
(NL)
Museo
d’Arte
Moderna
di
Bologna
Average
student
age
Educational
level
17 Pre-
University
Education
17
17
23 Higher
Education
21
15 The
Stolen
Moment
Appropriate imagery
from the public
domain, in order to
create meaningful
images dealing with
the notion of ‘the
stolen moment’.
Hogeschool
voor de
Kunsten
Utrecht
Utrecht
(NL)
21
Table 13: Central unit of analysis of the prototyping and evaluation phase, sorted by educational level
was co- initiated and hosted by the Master of Arts Education of the
Amsterdam School of the Arts and presented as an international postgraduate
program for art educators. This context entailed that the course
had to be relevant for both applicants who only wanted to participate in
the summer school and for those who joined the design-based research
program. The first summer school was implemented in 2011 as a pilot version;
the second, definitive summer school was implemented in 2012.
To allow an exploration of my model for authentic art education
in various local contexts and at different educational levels, I pursued a purposive
sampling process in two steps as part of the application process of the
summer school. First, the target group for the summer school was announced
on the application website. Applicants should be professional art or media
educators with substantial expertise and opportunities to implement the
results of the summer school in their practice. Applicants were also asked to
motivate if they wanted to participate in the subsequent research project, for
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which they would receive additional study credits. The next step entailed that
I selected participants for the summer school on the basis of the applicants
CVs and their written motivations. Educational experience and motivation for
participation in the research group were the main selection criteria for enrolment
in the summer school.
In July 2011, the first edition of the summer school was executed with
24 participants. This summer school functioned as a pilot in my research plan,
to ascertain whether its program matched the levels and needs of the participating
teachers and to test whether they were able to design a rudimental
course plan in a limited time. The evaluation of the first summer school
showed that the level of the program was adequate and supported the educational
design process of the participating teachers. However, only four participants
continued the process of course design and implementation in the
period after the summer school. Many of the teachers who joined the research
group were unable to implement their course in the year after the summer
school. Some of them had personal reasons to abandon the research program;
others were confronted with unexpected practical concerns, like curriculum
changes or a lack of time. I decided to encourage participation in the research
program of the next summer school with a financial incentive. Future applicants
would receive a partial reimbursement of the summer school fee after
they had completed the implementation and evaluation process.
In July 2012, 24 new participants attended the definitive version of
the summer school. Sixteen participants of that summer school joined the
research group and continued to implement and evaluate their courses.
Four additional participants, who had attended the first summer school in
2011, also joined the research group. These four participants had the disadvantage
of attending the pilot summer school, but they could compensate for
this because they had already implemented their course in the first year and
wanted to improve it during a second iteration. A total of 20 participants (re)
designed, implemented and evaluated a course between July 2012 and July
2013. Because some of these participants developed and executed their courses
cooperatively, the central unit of analysis in this empirical study is formed
by 15 cases (see table 13).
Most of the courses were implemented at Dutch schools at the level of
secondary education. These cases differ from each other due to their location,
higher and lower educational levels and variations in the ages of the pupils.
The majority of these secondary schools are located in the Randstad, The
Netherlands’ largest urban agglomeration. The schools in Den Helder,
Woerden, Deventer and Hoofddorp represent rural and sub-urban contexts.
The level of higher general secondary education (HAVO) is dominant among
the secondary schools, but some courses were also implemented at the lowest
(VMBO) and the highest level (VWO) of Dutch general secondary education.
One course was implemented at a secondary school outside the Netherlands,
in Hungary. At most of the secondary schools the courses were aimed at students
of around 15 years of age. The youngest students at the secondary level
were 12 years old and the oldest 18. The sample is further diversified by three
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courses that were implemented at the level of higher education: two in the
Netherlands and one in Italy. These three cases differ from the others because
they were implemented in vocational programs at art academies, representing
students in their early twenties, who aspire to professional careers in the field
of the arts.
Together, the fifteen cases represent a heterogeneous sample, which
allowed me to study the characteristics in varied educational contexts. The
school contexts range from general art education to vocational education for
art professionals located both inside and outside the Netherlands. Their student
populations range from young pupils at the lower level of secondary education
to older students in higher education.
To summarize, the sample provided opportunities for both validation
and theoretical exploration of the design principles of authentic art education.
I evaluated the impact of the model of authentic art education through a comparable
form (a course designed and implemented by teachers), and I could
explore it in greater depth because this process took place in various local
practices and at different educational levels. The combined deductive and
inductive approach applied to cross-case analysis allowed me to generalize
results analytically, both with regard to their practical impact and their contribution
to educational theory. Although a quantitative instrument was used
during this study, the context-bound nature of the cases in the sample
required that all generalizations should be treated as forms of moderatum
generalization. According to Payne and Williams moderatum generalizations
are moderate in their scope and they have a hypothetical character; they are
“testable propositions that might be confirmed or refuted through further
evidence” (Payne & Williams, 2005, p. 297). In the next chapters I will discuss
the results of the different research instruments that were deployed during
the prototyping and evaluation phase of this study.
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8
The
Prototyping
Phase
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This chapter discusses the prototyping phase of the design-based
study in detail. The prototyping phase refers to the period in which
different teachers developed a written course plan for their local practice.
To facilitate the prototyping process, I organized summer schools
that enabled teachers to get acquainted with the design principles of
authentic art education and to experience educational design as a
collective process. After the six-day summer school ended, teachers
developed their prototypes further individually and converted them
into written course plans.
Below, I will describe the program and proceedings of the
summer school and the results of my observations during that period,
combined with the evaluation of the entire educational design process
as it was perceived by the participating teachers. The triangulation of
the formative evaluations during the summer school and the summative
data from the interviews with teachers enables me to analyze and
discuss the main issues during the prototyping phase in depth.
Summer school
The program of the summer school was constructed around four objectives:
participants investigate and discuss the model of authentic art education;
they analyze and select relevant contemporary art and media works for educational
use; they apply forms of creative information technologies to their
teaching practice; and they design a blueprint for a course. Remix Culture
was chosen as a central theme to coordinate the different lectures, workshop
and design sessions in the summer school and to emphasize its orientation
at the intersection of contemporary art and popular culture. The
phrase remix culture refers both to creative processes in informal networks
and to socially engaged art forms.
To reflect the principles of authentic education, the summer school
was pedagogically designed as a complex and complete assignment: after
the participants were introduced to the backgrounds of authentic art
education and the evolving model, they were divided into pairs with the
task to design a course blueprint and present it on the last day of the summer
course. This approach enabled the participants to approach educational
design as a collaborative and continuous process during the summer
school, fuelled by plenary theoretical, receptive and artistic sessions.
The summer school functioned as a six-day design session, alternated with
lectures, field trips and practical workshops. The lectures and field trips presented
scholars, artists, artworks and examples, which were often derived
from the informal and professional communities in the visual domain that
influenced the model for authentic art education. The practical workshops
involved artistic forms and techniques that are well known in the informal
and professional art domain but much less common in educational settings,
like digital image and video manipulation, audio appropriation and public
space interventions. Two experienced art educators, well acquainted with
the principles of authentic art education, coached the participants during
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the educational design sessions. Feedback sessions fostered the exchange
of knowledge and experiences between participants and stimulated the
iterative process of educational design. On the last day of the summer
school, researchers and field experts reviewed the participants’ course blueprints
as an expert panel. The program items and the contributing lecturers,
coaches and experts of the summer schools are shown in appendix 1.
Analysis of the design process during the prototyping phase
The prototyping phase of this design-based study can be divided in two main
iterations. The most intensive stage took place during the summer school,
when participants developed their initial course ideas in the context of a theoretical
and artistic program, and they received direct feedback from both
peers and professionals in the field of art education. My observations during
the design sessions and the expert panel at the end of the summer school
functioned as the main formative evaluation instruments during this iteration.
The second iteration ran in the period between the summer school and
the implementation of the courses. Participants adjusted and completed their
written course plans individually and handed them in before their first lesson
commenced. Immediately after a course was finished, I interviewed the
teacher(s) involved about his or her experiences during the entire design process.
The case sheets section provides an overview of the different courses the
teachers developed during this study and contains information about the
local contexts in which the courses were implemented.
The analysis of the combined data obtained from observations,
interviews and course plans gave me a comprehensive insight in the
iterative educational design process during the prototyping phase. The
designing teachers were able to operationalize the model of authentic art
education with regard to the selection of contemporary subject matter, the
formulation of societal themes, the organization of the learning/teaching
arrangement via artworks and complex assignments, and the role of cooperation
during the design process. I will discuss these different aspects below.
Contemporary subject matter
The model of authentic art education endorses the establishment of meaningful,
contemporary connections between art, popular culture and societal
issues. I found support for this approach because the designing teachers
were able to select contemporary examples and themes associated with societal
discourses related to art and visual culture during the design process.
Most participants used the model for authentic art education as a checklist
to guarantee a variation among their sources in relation to the professional
art world, popular culture and global and local issues (see figure 29). A teacher
describes how he used the model: “Okay, which artists are related to this
theme? Which forms of culture that my students are familiar with are related,
and how does the assignment relate to a societal context, or to our city?”
Several teachers stressed that the model assisted them in seeking diversity
and balance with regard to subject matter during the initial design process.
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There was a tendency among the participants to select visual sources with a
capacity to address multiple domains, like a conceptual artwork that both
uses references to popular culture and addresses a societal theme. Hence,
purely formal or abstract works were generally not considered as sources
for courses during the design sessions. One teacher emphasized that he
mainly focused on the selection of contemporary artworks during the
design process because the students will always find additional popular
sources during the course: “My inspiration resides in the contemporary art
world, because all of my students are members of different subcultures”.
This notion could explain why contemporary ‘high art’ works are prominent
across the course descriptions, because the connection with more popular
forms of art is seen as a research task for the students.
Gender in online visual culture
Artists playing with/
researching gender
a: Learning is aimed
towards the culture
of the student
Complex assignment:
Use remix technology as
a research-tool to hack
gender stereotypes
b: Learning tasks
are derived from
activities performed
by art professionals
GENDER STEREOTYPES:
Jhally, Sut. The Codes of Gender. (film)
Kilbourne, Jane. Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising's Image of Women. (film)
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. (book)
c: Learning is situated in
broad societal contexts
Figure 29: Blueprint for the course 'Hack Gender Stereotypes'
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Several of the participants remarked that seeing and discussing many relevant
contemporary artworks advanced their educational design process. A teacher
explains: “Your head is filled with lectures and examples that we discussed
during the summer school. I came up with the gender theme myself, but we
implemented many of the summer school’s ideas and examples directly into
our course”. Throughout the design seminars in the summer school participants
frequently exchanged and supplemented each other’s sources.
Teachers who already possessed substantial knowledge about contemporary
artworks and visual examples seemed most comfortable with their roles as
educational designers, requiring less support from the coaches and providing
more feedback during the peer review sessions.
Many participants also mentioned specific pedagogical tools that
they experienced during the summer course as important stimuli. Whereas
visual art courses traditionally require the student to work individually,
almost all the courses that were developed during this project involve group
assignments. One teacher stressed that the summer school enabled her to
experience the psychological effect of group tasks:
I really experienced how it feels when you have to accomplish
something with a group of people who you barely know, in
a short amount of time. At first you want to resist, but then
you realize that when you just do it, there is always a result
in the end.
Group assignments, peer review sessions and the use of online social networks
during the summer school were specifically mentioned as sources of
inspiration for the course designs. A teacher explains: “The way free online
tools like Pixler and Yammer were used to stimulate collaboration among
the participants; I used that all in my lessons”. Similarly, the artistic materials
and techniques that are discussed and used during the courses also
reflect this approach to the contemporary. Several of the courses present
assignments that involve digital appropriation, digital manipulation and
combinations of traditional and audiovisual media.
Teachers stressed that the model of authentic art education challenged
them to engage art educational design as a continuous exploration
of present-day developments and methods in different art-related fields. A
teacher explains: “Usually when I design new lessons, I rely on what I already
know, rather than looking for new material”. The responses of the different
teachers underline that the contemporary examples, materials and methods
they studied during the summer school contributed to their design process
and that the model of authentic art education offered them a structure to
include these influences in their courses.
Societal themes
The model of authentic art education advocates a thematic approach towards
curriculum design, situating art education in broad societal contexts. This
approach was confirmed by the proceedings during the prototyping phase,
because a majority of the participants formulated central themes for their
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course, derived from a coherent group of context-rich sources (artworks,
images and texts). Questions around general topics like ownership, identity,
gender, activism, marketing and public space were identified and specified in
the critical context that was provided by contemporary artworks and popular
imagery. A teacher explains: “We formulated a theme in the beginning:
‘transfer the digital world to the real world’, that was our central concept
and I added all the next steps later on.” Another teacher explains that they
devised their theme of ‘do it yourself’ due to a manual of furniture manufacturer
IKEA. Some teachers commented that their design process was aimed
more at strengthening the connections between visual culture and societal
topics than is usually the case: “I find it difficult to include the world outside
the arts in my lessons. I wanted to approach my course from a broader perspective,
that is what the model emphasized.”
Several participants highlighted that they approached their courses
as opportunities for students to research and discuss local or global themes
through artistic production. A teacher describes how she struggled to integrate
such themes into an art curriculum: “The contextualization of art challenged
me during the design process. How do I want to discuss that in class,
and how big should that societal segment be? When does my art subject
become a social studies class?” Another teacher mentioned that the model
challenged her to include more theory in her course than she would normally:
“I always try to connect art and theory, but the theoretical component
is much more prominent in this course.” During the expert panel review, the
experts were sometimes critical regarding the thematization of societal contexts
and advised participants to articulate these contexts more specifically
in their course descriptions. Some examples of the experts’ feedback: “Keep
in mind that gender can be an unfamiliar theme for students”; “A lot of your
examples are parodies, you could add theory about what parodies are”;
“How are you going to deal with forms of activism that are politically
incorrect?” The design sessions and discussions during the summer school
indicated that both participants and experts understood the courses as cognitive
endeavors for students, aimed at the development of aesthetic, as well
as conceptual and critical competences.
Artworks as design organizers
Many teachers used one key source (either related to art or to popular culture)
as an initial organizer for the design of the whole course. An example
of this process was the course Remix the music video, in which students have
to reflect on conventions in music videos. This course was primarily inspired
by the video I am a boyband (2002), in which artist Benny Nemerofsky simultaneously
plays all four members of a commercially stylized boy band,
singing an electronic version of an Elizabethan madrigal. During the design
process, popular music videos and other artworks were used to extend the
set of examples that students should study. The central assignment of this
course was also directly derived from Nemerofsky’s example: ‘Create a music
video that mixes the visual style of one popular genre with another genre’.
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In such cases, a single artwork functions as a responsive environment
organizer (Earl, 1987). Earl has described instructional design as a process
that is not only based on logical thinking but also on creativity and intuition.
An educational designer can specify needs, learning goals, criteria, subject
matter, methods and media, but may still not have a coherent course
design. Responsive environment organizers are “special bits of content
which accelerate design decision making and frequently result in a mental
click” (Earl, 1987, p. 102). According to Earl, a responsive environment organizer
has two properties: it enables the educational designer to form a mental
image of the entire learning-teaching arrangement during the design process.
Its second property is that, when used during the course’s execution, it
can function as a learning stimulus and as a point of reference for the student.
Earl qualifies content as a responsive environment organizer when it
has the capacity to: generate the responses needed for learning; serve as a
focal point of learning; act as an anchoring idea or organizer; and generate
an insightful view of the teaching-learning process (Earl, 1987, p. 103). During
the prototyping phase of this study, artworks and other visual examples
often proved to have the capacity to function as responsive environment
organizers. A creative work is not just a display of technique and media; it
embodies ideas, theories, processes, opinions and contexts that trigger the
designers’ imagination to articulate a course’s central theme, content and
proceedings. In the light of authentic art education, a well-chosen creative
work can help teachers to formulate a complete or complex assignment
that, in turn, can function as a mind organizer for teachers and students.
Complex assignments as design organizers
The model of authentic art education advocates the formulation of complete
and complex learning tasks. Such tasks are considered to be complete
when they are not divided into small subtasks and they are complex when
they give scope for students’ initiative and call on their knowledge and
skills. The teachers’ design process illustrated that their formulation of
complete and complex assignments during the prototyping phase
enhanced the consistency of their courses and supported a holistic
approach to course design.
The complex assignments that teachers formulated during the
summer school were usually presented in the form of a single sentence,
aimed directly at the student, like: ‘Use remix-technology as a research tool
to hack gender stereotypes’ or ‘Make a Youtube tutorial about something
you are good at’. I noticed that the formulation of a complex assignment
aided the consistency of the course, because it forced teachers to discuss
global goals and end results, rather than single lessons or exercises. Such a
holistic approach was not customary for all of the participants, as a teacher
explains: “Normally I start my lessons with an assignment and along the way
I throw in new things to get things going.” Another one said: “Normally, I
just think up some nice activities and expand them. Now I first formulated
what the students had to present in the end and went back from there”.
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The formulation of global assignments not only shows how the various
components of a course are interrelated, it also enables others (colleagues,
students) to grasp the course’s progress and ultimate aim in the form of a
compact mind organizer. This communicative effect of the assignments was
evident during the expert panel review, because part of the experts’ feedback
was aimed at the reformulation or reconsideration of these complex assignments.
The formulation of complex assignments enabled both designers
and reviewers to discuss aspects of subject matter, pedagogy and organization
in a comprehensive, interconnected manner. However, the members of
the expert panel mentioned that group processes and classroom interaction
received comparatively less attention during the summer school than the
description of subject matter and central assignments. Many of the participants
did mention group interaction inside and outside the classroom as
important features in their courses, but it often remained unclear how these
collaborative pedagogies would take shape. A logical explanation for this
phenomenon could be that the designers were still so involved with the contents
of their courses that the practical aspects of group pedagogies were
postponed to a later moment. This connects with Nieveen (2009), who formulated
four criteria for high quality interventions: relevance, consistency,
practicality and effectiveness. According to Nieveen, the early stage of educational
design focuses mainly on the relevancy and consistency of the intervention.
When the outline of the intervention becomes clearer, the focus in
the design-based process shifts to practicality and effectiveness.
The holistic approach toward curriculum design was demonstrated
by the fact that most participants maintained the theme, examples and
complex assignment of their blueprints in the final course descriptions.
A teacher explains: “I included some examples that are specific for my local
context, but the general concept did not change”. Teachers reported the
design process after the summer school in terms of fine-tuning, or adding
more structure and details. Some of the teachers added smaller assignments
or different research and design phases to the course to offer students more
grip within the complex assignment they had already formulated. However,
the courses maintained their ultimate focus and were coordinated by one
central assignment, rather than by a series of isolated sub-tasks. An important
influence on the way the courses were finalized was the organization of the
school curriculum; the amount of available hours and the way the courses
were scheduled. Most teachers did not have to modify their blueprints drastically
to cast their course plan into the existing organizational structures of
the school. A teacher comments: “The general idea definitely remained the
same. But things evolved more like: okay, these are the available weeks, how
can I match that with my blueprint and what should be done in which lesson.”
It is noticeable that some of the teachers managed to blend their courses
into a traditional school curriculum, with relatively short lessons which run
over a relatively short period. Such limited time spans and fragmented timetables
are not the ideal circumstances for authentic art education, but none
of the teachers mentioned this as a problem during the design process.
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Cooperative educational design
Authentic art education advocates collaborative forms of learning, which
was also mirrored in the teachers learning process during the prototyping
phase: the model of authentic art education functioned as a collective
framework that helped teachers to develop their courses in a more systematic
and collaborative manner than is usually the case in their daily practice.
Several participants mentioned that their educational design process is
usually a solitary activity with a lot of time pressure, which is not explicitly
coordinated in their educational institutions. One teacher even pointed out
that she normally pays almost no attention to the design process: “I do not
design most of my lessons, to be honest. I know I should, but most of the
time I just teach.”
Most teachers stated that they experienced their design process
during this study as more systemized and less instinctive than usual. An
experienced teacher clarifies: “I have 20 years of teaching experience in
which I tried a lot and formed all kinds of intuitive ideas. The model helped
me to rethink my design process.” A more systematic approach toward educational
design seemed to stimulate the teachers to regard their students
more as independent and active learners. The participating teachers mentioned
that they gave more thought to different work formats for the students
during the design process. A teacher: “In the beginning I thought that
the model merely confirmed what I already did. But I noticed that it forced
me to think questions through like: how can I involve the students and
which parts do I need to deliver to the course”. Another teacher formulated
it as: “I wanted to give the students more responsibility than I usually do”.
Many of the participating teachers reported that their experiences
with authentic art education during the design process stimulated cooperation
between teachers. A number of them pointed out that they miss out on
regular networked activities with colleagues in and outside the school and
that the collective design seminars during the summer school had contributed
to the design process: “When you design collectively, your course
becomes richer because it will contain more knowledge and examples than
when you just use your personal frame of reference.” Other teachers mentioned
that co-designing has the capacity to contribute to the quality of the
design, because teachers are forced to articulate their educational ideas to
their peers and receive their direct feedback. One of the participating teachers
used these experiences to intensify the collaboration with her local colleagues:
“We collaborated much more at our school this last year. We designed
courses together, visited each other’s lessons and provided peer feedback. I
really need feedback”. The educational design process during this study enabled
the teachers to experience educational design as coordinated and collaborative
activity, which often contrasted largely with their daily practice.
Prototyping phase: conclusions
The collected data enabled me to answer the first research question of this
study: How do art teachers translate the revised design principles of authentic art
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education to lessons and how do they perceive this design process? My observations
during the design process and the evaluations with the participating
teachers indicated that the model of authentic art education aided teachers
to design courses with a high level of relevancy and consistency in an artistic
and communicative manner. I can underpin these conclusions on the basis
of the first two of Nieveen’s (2009) criteria for high quality interventions:
relevance and consistency.
An intervention is considered relevant if it addresses emergent needs
and if it is based on state of the art knowledge (Nieveen, 2009, p. 94). The prototyping
phase confirmed that the participating teachers followed a design
process that was steered by the design principles of authentic art education.
They started with a thematic assembly of art-related resources and aligned
these with a central assignment, learning goals, criteria and course proceedings.
This procedure challenged teachers to study and collect contemporary
sources at the crossroads of popular culture, contemporary art and societal
issues. Relevancy of the courses can be claimed, because the teachers were
able to explore present day issues in search of relevant knowledge that resides
in different art-related domains by combining accessible resources for students
with more distant and challenging forms of subject matter.
An intervention is considered to be consistent when it is logically
designed (Nieveen, 2009, p. 94). The proceedings during the prototyping
phase contributed to the course’s consistency because the formulation of
complex assignments encouraged teachers to follow a holistic approach
to course design, by focusing on general competencies and final outcomes
rather than on single lessons or isolated tasks. This reinforces the student
as an active learner, because teachers tend to imagine their learning
arrangement more from a learner’s perspective during the design process,
addressing issues like relevancy, coherency and varied work formats. The
visual examples and artworks that were selected in the initial design phase
proved to have a capacity to function as responsive environment organizers
(Earl, 1987): a single artwork or image that enables a teacher (and a learner)
to form a mental image of the entire learning arrangement and directs the
formulation of a complex assignment, learning goals and the organization
of the course.
The collective take on curriculum design, as implemented during
the summer schools, was also perceived as a valuable aspect by the participants.
The different aspects of the model for authentic art education offered
the participating teachers a structure to mutually discuss and improve their
intervention in terms of both its relevancy and its consistency. Several teachers
highlighted that such collective forms of curriculum design are not
common in their daily practice.
The educational design process that teachers completed during this
study indicates that participants were able to combine an artistic and communicative
approach toward curriculum design. The premise of the artistic
approach is that educational design is a subjective process, conducted by the
vision and expertise of the designer (Thijs & Van den Akker, 2009, p. 19).
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The creative approach was most prominent in the early stages of the design
process, when teachers used their personal taste and experience to select
relevant subject matter and themes that were understood as meaningful for
the target group. In the next stage of the process teachers formulated complex
assignments, which enabled them to connect the subject matter with
learning objectives, final outcomes and criteria of the courses. Here, the
communicative approach became more dominant, as teachers discussed
and improved the coherence of the learning/teaching arrangement with
peers and experts.
A combined creative and communicative approach toward educational
design acknowledges the design process as cyclical and holistic,
which I consider to be more appropriate for authentic art education than a
linear or instrumental procedure. Gulikers (2011) has argued that the design
of authentic learning should start with the definition of the assessment
situation and learning objectives (results, competencies), from which the
designer follows a logical path toward the selection of educational input
(subject matter). However, such an approach overlooks two important problems.
A linear, outcome-based approach suggests that learning activities and
subject matter evolve logically from the definition of the competencies that
the learner should develop. This works fairly well when a student has to
learn to perform unambiguous (professional) tasks with a well-defined
underlying knowledge base (Fransen, 2007). However, art teachers are dealing
with broadly defined and complex competencies, which offer little
guidance for the selection of subject matter. Another complication is that
the educational content of art education is continuously changing and
expanding under the influence of rapid transformations in the domain of
art and visual culture, including the interests and activities of the student
outside school. Authentic art education deals with both problems by challenging
teachers to derive the desired learning output from the real-world
practices of visual producers. This requires designers to use a creative rather
than an instrumental approach because domain-specific connoisseurship
(Eisner, 1979) is needed to identify relevant learning experiences that can be
aligned with specific learning objectives. The input and the output for learning
have to be considered simultaneously because they influence each other.
My study has shown that thematic learning and teaching arrangements
are ‘embedded’ in the works and procedures of visual producers.
Teachers studied contemporary artistic practices as educational input and
as models for the desired learning outcomes. This enabled them to design
meaningful learning arrangements that are aimed at the student’s learning,
fuelled by the works, methods and themes that reside in authentic visual
practices. The model of authentic art education allowed designers to combine
forms of creative, collective and logical thinking throughout the design
process, stimulating them to discover practices and art-related contexts that
enabled them to construct relevant and consistent learning arrangements.
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The fifteen courses that the teachers developed during this study are
described in the case sheets section on the following pages. The subsequent
chapter discusses the implementation and evaluation of these courses.
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Case sheets
section
The descriptions and data in this section provide an overview of the
educational interventions that were designed and implemented in
the course of this design-based study. Each case sheet contains a
description of the local context and main characteristics of a course,
based on the written curriculum plan of the designing teacher(s).
Additionally, each case sheet contains information about how the
implemented course was perceived by participants: it presents a
top-5 of the most important learning experiences that were reported
by the students, a top-3 of the aspects that students found most
innovative, and a quote of a teacher who executed the course. As
such, the case sheets provide a compact overview of the educational
interventions that are developed during the prototyping phase and
assessment phase, which are discussed in chapters 7-9.
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Case sheet 1
Teach Me How to Dougie
Nova College Amsterdam
Complex assignment: Make a Youtube tutorial about
something you are good at.
Course duration: 12 hours (8 lessons of 90 minutes)
Level: 2nd grade of International Bridging School,
Lower General Secondary Education (VMBO B-T)
The participants in this course are immigrants and refugees who arrived
in the Netherlands approximately two years earlier. Many of these students
only speak Dutch at an elementary level and have little experience with
audiovisual techniques and computers. The central assignment in this
course entails that students have to focus on a personal skill, which they
share with others via an online video tutorial, inspired by the work of artist
Hennessy Youngman and amateur Youtube tutorials. The ‘Dougie’ in the
course’s title is a popular hiphop dance for which many home made instructional
videos exist on the Internet. Main aim of the course is that students
Student work: How to Braid Your Hair (video stills)
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learn to visualize and share their interests in an intelligible and creative
manner. Because the school does not own specialized audiovisual equipment,
students will use their cell phone cameras and free video editing
software to produce their work.
Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“The students found it really exciting that their films were
published on Youtube. They asked me all the time how many
hits they had or how many people had seen their film.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=123)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Audiovisual techniques 22.8% I learned how to make a video
Cooperation 17.9% I noticed that we worked together really
well
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 11.4% I found out that making movies is cool
Peer learning/group interaction 9.8% I found out that me and my partner had
different ideas
Digital techniques 8.9% I learned how you can insert titles on a
video
Other 29.3%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=23)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 91.3%
No, this was a regular course 0%
Other 8.7%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=21)
Different materials/techniques 52.4% We worked with film and computers, not
with our hands
More freedom 38.2% We had more freedom to determine what
we wanted to do independently
More aimed at ideas 4.7% I am not really skillful, and now I was able
to use my ideas more
Other 4.7%
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Case sheet 2
Media Culture in the Picture
Calsbeek College, Woerden
Complex assignment: Use artistic and theoretical research methods to form
your opinion about a theme in our mediatized society and present the
results in an audiovisual form.
Course duration: 30 hours (10 lessons of 3 hours)
Level: 2nd grade of Lower General Secondary Education (VMBO-T)
This course is designed as a week-long cross-curricular media literacy project
with contributions from different school subjects, artists and an art
institutes. Main aim of the project is that students are able to analyze how
popular media influences their daily lives and demonstrate how they can
participate critically and artistically in this process. Forming small teams,
students choose a media-related theme (media & identity, media & privacy,
media & power, media & body, media & games, media & production) and
define a central research question. During the project the students execute
Student work: Identity (mixed media)
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their study, alternated with theoretical lessons, artistic workshops and museum
lessons at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. According to the BYODprinciple
(Bring Your Own Device), students use their personal laptops,
tablets and smartphones for research and artistic productions throughout
the project. On the last day, students present their results in the form of a
Pecha Kucha (20 digital slides, 20 seconds each) and are graded by an expert
panel of teachers.
Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“Normally these project weeks are filled with various, unrelated
workshops and excursions. Now I tried to connect all the activities
under one central theme. When I noticed that I was able to
formulate the central learning goal in one single sentence, I knew
that this project would be successful.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=286)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Societal issues/contexts 40.6% I learned that I should not put all my
private information online
Digital techniques 12.2% I learned how to manipulate images
Art 9.4% I learned that there are artworks that are
related to mass media
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 6.6% I was surprised that art does not have to
be boring
Cooperation 5.2% I discovered that I can cooperate well
with people that I did not know previously
Other 25.9%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=30)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 100%
No, this was a regular course 0%
Other 0%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=30)
Different pedagogical approach 36.7% We were allowed to use iPads and
cellphones in class
Different subject matter 33.3% Normally we never talk about video
games in class
More aimed at collaboration 10% We worked together with students from
other classes
Other 20%
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Case sheet 3
Remix the Music Video
Etty Hillesum Lyceum, Deventer
Complex assignment: Create your own music video in which the visual code
of one genre is mixed with the music of another genre.
Course duration: ± 7 hours (8 lessons of 50 minutes)
Level: 4th grade of Higher General Secondary Education (HAVO)
The main aim of this course is that students learn to make an audiovisual
production that places genres and stereotypes of music videos in a critical
context. Students discuss key works like I am a Boyband by artist Benny
Nemerofski and Dani California by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and make an
analysis of different popular musical video genres. Operating in small
teams, they design a script for a short music video that combines at least
two ‘incompatible’ musical genres. After the final script is discussed and
the team roles have been divided, students shoot material on location and
edit their film using a video editing software application. The edited videos
are published on the Internet and presented, peer reviewed and assessed
in class.
Student work: Techno Cowboy (video still)
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Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“I started the course by showing popular music videos and subsequently
discussed related contemporary art works. Normally I
feel a slight resistance among my students when I discuss art in
class, but now I sensed a more positive attitude to what I had to
say and got reactions like “O, so this is art too?” They seemed to
approach art with a more open outlook, which I experienced as a
nice effect”.
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=154)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Popular visual culture 18.8% I learned about the influence of camera
angles on a film
Art 9.7% I learned that art has many aspects
Production process 9.1% I learned that editing is time consuming
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 8.4% I learned that I like music
Not experiencing involvement/pride/
talent
Other 46.1%
7.8% I noticed that I am not interested in
culture
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=28)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 35.7%
No, this was a regular course 28.6%
Other 35.7%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=10)
Different materials/techniques 20% We worked with video during class
More freedom 20% We were allowed to work more
independently
Different pedagogical approach 20% This course was more varied than our
other courses
Other 40%
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 4
Advertism
Theater Havo, Rotterdam
Complex assignment: Choose a billboard in public space and alter its visual
appearance in such a manner that it expresses your critique on the product.
Course duration: ± 23 hours (7 lessons of 200 minutes)
Level: 3th grade of Higher General Secondary Education (HAVO)
The Theater Havo provides general schooling with extra emphasis on theatre,
film and design education. Most of its students are more interested and
experienced in arts subjects than those in regular secondary schools. The
course Advertism aims to develop the student’s analytical, critical and creative
competencies with regard to visual branding and commercial communication
in the public domain. The context of the central assignment is
provided by examples of activist art and visual culture, as seen in the work
of Jonas Staal, The Yes Men and various street artists. Small student teams
choose a company that advertises in public space and try to discover which
aspects of its enterprise are usually omitted from the public image.
Subsequently, students design a visual intervention on an existing billboard
that highlights an aspect of the company that it would rather hide. Students
present the full research, design and execution process in the form of an
edited video.
Student work: C&A = Child Abuse (digital print)
208
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“What made this course different from my usual courses is
that the students were challenged to show their work in public.
Because of that, I think that every student has more or less
experienced what is to be an artist or someone who makes
a statement in public space.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=65)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Creativity/artistic research 20.0% I learned that you have to be critical and
that you have to investigate things
Peer learning/group interaction 15.4% I learned how to formulate my opinion
during a discussion
Cooperation 10.8% I learned that I look more critically at our
product when we work together
Digital techniques 10.8% I learned how to use Photoshop
Production process 9.2% I noticed that we organized our process
better than before
Other 29.3%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=16)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 93.7%
No, this was a regular course 6.3%
Other 0%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=15)
More aimed at collaboration 66.6% We (filmers) worked together with
students from graphic design
Different materials/techniques 13.3% It was more aimed at film than usual
Different pedagogical approach 13.3% We worked on the same project during
different classes
Other 6.7%
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 5
A Matter of Time and Space
Spinoza Lyceum and Fons Vitae Lyceum, Amsterdam, Haarlemmer Lyceum,
Haarlem
Complex assignment: Give a new meaning to an existing location or place
through a spatial intervention.
Course duration: 1 day
Level: 4th grade of Higher General Secondary Education (HAVO)
This course was developed by three teachers at different schools in cooperation
with W193, a contemporary art space in Amsterdam. Main aim of the
course is that students can learn to identify and analyze different forms of
site-specific art and apply this knowledge to the design and production of
a local spatial intervention. During the course, students formulate quality
criteria for site-specific art based on their visit to the exhibition ‘A matter
of time and space’ at W139 and the analysis of works by (street)artists like
Student work: Totem (cardboard, tape)
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Banksy, Slinkachu, Christo, and Elmgreen & Dragset. Back in school, students
design and execute a local intervention, using materials like cardboard, tape,
ropes, markers and found objects.
Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“Because tape and cardboard were the only materials available,
students realized that it was impossible to create something
realistic or esthetical, which forced them to take a conceptual
approach. That was really important for us.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=79)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Art 51.9% I learned that artworks really mean
something
Production process 19.0% I discovered that it is possible to make art
in a short time
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 8.9% I discovered that I rather like contemporary
art
Creativity/artistic research 7.6% I learned to think up a good idea
Not experiencing involvement/pride/
talent
Other 7.5%
5.1% I realized that I do not want to be an artist
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=17)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 94%
No, this was a regular course 6%
Other 0%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=16)
More learning outside school 56.3% We had never visited a contemporary art
gallery
Different pedagogical approach 18.7% It was a combination between analyzing
and producing art
More theory 18.7% They explained more about artists than
usual
Other 6.3%
Case sheets section
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 6
Redesign Your Hub
Katholieke Scholengemeenschap Hoofddorp
Complex assignment: Create a new design for a hub that is important to you.
Course duration: 15 hours (10 lessons of 90 minutes)
Level: 5th grade of Higher General Secondary Education (HAVO)
This school is populated by students who live in the Haarlemmermeer polder
area. The course aims to let students rethink and redesign the hubs they
pass by bike almost daily, but which remain unnoticed. In the first phase students
play the educational GPS game ‘De Planning’ that enables them to discover
the hidden facts about the history of the Haarlemmermeer. In the
second phase, students draw their daily routes on maps that are digitally
merged in order to display the intersections that are used most. Different
approaches to architectural interventions will be discussed in class using
artists such as Georg Schneider, James Turrell and Claes Oldenburg. The
third phase entails each groups developing a two-dimensional design for an
object, a building or a facility that students perceive as an improvement of
the hub. Students work in groups during the entire course and are allowed
to produce their designs with both traditional or digital media.
Student work: Architectural Intervention (pencil on paper)
212
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“To visualize something is hard for them, it frustrates them.
Next time I want to provide them with more strategies that
can help them to design their idea.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=189)
Category
Not experiencing involvement/pride/
talent
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
37% I found out that this school subject is of
no use to me
Creativity/artistic research 13.8% I discovered that it is quite challenging to
develop a good idea
Art 10.6% I was surprised that there are also alternative
forms of art
Production process 10.1% I learned to design an artwork in different
steps
Other visual techniques 9.5% I learned to use perspective in my
drawings
Other 19%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=27)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 29.6%
No, this was a regular course 66.7%
Other 3.7%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=8)
Different pedagogical approach 37.5% All the lessons related to each other
Different materials/techniques 25% We combined drawing with other
techniques
More freedom 12.5% You had to use your personal talent more
in this course
Other 25%
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 7
Hack your Hood
Zöld Kakas Líceum, Budapest
Complex assignment: Devise a playful intervention that can make your neighborhood
a better, more positive place and create a media campaign in order
to convince your class about it.
Course duration: 12 hours (4 lessons of 3 hours)
Level: 9th grade of Hungarian Higher General Secondary and Pre-University
Education
This course is implemented at a school that offers general education for students
who, mostly due to social-emotional problems, dropped out of regular
schools. The main aim of the course is to engage the students in the process
of participatory media creation as an agent of communities, contrary to
mainstream media as an agent of commercial and political powers. After
the theme is contextualized by theories of Eric Kluitenberg and David Garcia
and visual productions by John Körmeling, Shepard Fairey and Adbusters,
students study local problems and solutions in groups of 3-5 participants.
Once a group has defined a problem and alternative resolutions, they
choose a method to create a media campaign. Students are challenged to
use easily accessible methods and cheap materials to design and publish
their campaign, either locally or online.
Student work: Headshot Just for You (digital print)
214
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“I had to reduce the number of tools they could choose from,
because they were just lost with too many choices and they
couldn’t do anything. These students are not used to making
choices in their lives at all.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=67)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Cooperation 22.4% I realized I can work well in a group
Not experiencing involvement/pride/
talent
13.4% I noticed it’s hard to work on something
I’m not interested in
Character/personal qualities 11.9% I learned that I don’t tell anything about
myself to strangers
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 11.9% I got interested during the second lesson
and I started to work
Peer learning/group interaction 10.4% I was surprised by the others trusting me
Other 29.9%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=12)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 83.3%
No, this was a regular course 8,3%
Other 8.3%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=10)
Not specified 80% We were introduced to a whole new and
unknown thing
Different subjects or themes 10% We dealt with topics we never dealt with
before
More freedom 10% Because here my opinion and style was
important, not only the rules
Other 0%
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 8
Transformation
Damstede, Amsterdam
Complex assignment: Create an alter ego by transforming your photographical
portrait.
Course duration: 15 hours (10 lessons of 90 minutes)
Level: 1st and 2nd grade of Higher General Secondary (HAVO) and Pre-
University Education (VWO)
This course was offered as an elective program for students who are interested
in art and media lessons after their regular classes. Most of the students
have no or little experience with the use of computers during art
courses. Main aim of this course is to introduce students to digital photo
manipulation as a means of personal artistic production. The course theme
is introduced through examples of online photo mash-ups and remixes, and
through the conceptual work of artists like Paolo Cirio, Robert Arnold and
Eugenio Merino. When students have determined their desired alter ego,
they transform themselves with make-up and accessories. After these basic
transformations have been photographed, students alter their portraits
further using photo editing software.
Student work: Lord of The Rings Remixed (digital print)
216
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Statement of one the teachers who designed and implemented the course:
“Many of them told us that they were going to use these digital
techniques at home. To continue learning at home… that is a
good thing, in my opinion.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=62)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Digital techniques 43.5% I learned how to use the application Pixler
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 9.7% I learned that workshops at school can be
fun
Peer learning/group interaction 9.7% I was surprised by the good atmosphere
Character/personal qualities 8.1% I learned that I am very critical, because I
want to do everything perfectly
Production process 8.1% I learned that it is not true that altering
pictures digitally is easy
Other 21%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=12)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 91.7%
No, this was a regular course 0%
Other 8.3%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=11)
More freedom 36.3% It was a nice course because you could
determine what you wanted to independently
Different materials/techniques 18.2% We do not usually work with computers in
art class
Different subject matter 18.2% We discussed different art themes than
usual
Other 27.3%
Case sheets section
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 9
Kritisign
Haags Montessori College, The Hague
Complex assignment: Create an artwork that discusses a contemporary issue
by recontextualizing existing elements of visual culture.
Course duration: ± 13 hours (6 lessons of 90 minutes, 1 museum trip)
Level: 3rd grade of Higher General Secondary (HAVO) and Pre-University
Education (VWO)
The title ‘Kritisign’ combines the Dutch words for ‘critical’, ‘design’ and
‘being’. This course is designed as cooperation between the Haags
Montessori College and the educational department of art cinema Haags
Filmhuis, with lessons taking place at both institutions. The course aims to
familiarize students with visual appropriation and art as forms of societal
critique. Working in small groups, students study resources including artworks
(Ai Wei Wei, James O’Keefe), films (Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan),
street art (Poster Boy, Banksy) and theory (Henri Jenkins, Lawrence Lessig).
Additionally, students visit a contemporary exhibition (Dwarsdesign at NAI
in 2011, Ja Natuurlijk at GEM in 2012) to help them to narrow down their subject
or theme. Students are allowed to choose any material or technique for
their artistic group production, which will be presented to a professional
jury at the Haags Filmhuis.
Student work: The Chewing Gum Project (video stills)
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Statement of one of the teachers who designed and implemented the course:
“What I really enjoyed was that the students also became very
self-reflective about how they look at things. We noticed that
many students became aware that they usually form their opinions
really fast.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=139)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Societal issues/contexts 25.9% I learned that matters are not always what
they appear to be
Art 13.7% I found out that you can make things
more clear with art
Creativity/artistic research 11.5% I learned to think more creatively
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 7.9% I found out that when I start something I
have to persist
Character/personal qualities 5.8% I discovered that I like to be in charge
Other 61,38%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=23)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 69.5%
No, this was a regular course 30.5%
Other 0%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=16)
More freedom 37.6% We were allowed to work anywhere in the
school
More learning outside school 25% We went to different museums and art
shows
Different pedagogical approach 18,7% We got a digital presentation with a lot of
examples and the assignment
Other 0%
Case sheets section
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 10
Re:Icon
Farel College Amersfoort
Complex assignment: Recontextualize the popular depiction of an iconic
person.
Course duration: ± 9.5 hours (8 lessons of 70 minutes)
Level: 5th grade of Pre-University Education (VWO)
This course is presented as a project that entails both theoretical and creative
research. Its central goal is to challenge students to study the backgrounds
of a well-known person and to create a visual comment on how the
image of this personality is constructed in the media. Students receive some
theoretical guidelines for the research process but are free to choose the
methods and materials to visualize their ideas. Students may also choose if
they work alone or in small groups. Artworks by contemporary artists who
play with iconic images, such as Cindy Sherman, Oliver Laric and Alison
Jackson, are discussed in class. At the end of the course, students have to
present both their documented research process and the final artwork.
Student work: Snow White (digital print)
220
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Statement of one the teachers who designed and implemented the course:
“Usually it costs me like two full lessons to talk for five minutes
with every student, since our classes are so big. I saved a lot of
valuable time during this course because students provided
peer-feedback via the Internet.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=192)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Creativity/artistic research 16.7% I learned that a good process contributes
to the final results
Societal issues/contexts 15.6% I learned that Martin Luther King is a good
example of an icon
Not experiencing involvement/pride/
talent
12.5% I found out that open structured projects
are not for me, I hate them.
Production process 10.9% I learned how to organize a successful
project
Digital techniques 8.9% I learned how to make digital stuff
Other 35.4%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=39)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 66.7%
No, this was a regular course 33.3%
Other 0%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=26)
More freedom 65.4% We received a lot of freedom, everybody
could choose something they were good
at
Different pedagogical approach 23.1% We assessed each others’ work
Different materials/techniques 7.6% We used different types of media
Other 3.9%
Case sheets section
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 11
Special Cases
Lyceum aan Zee, Den Helder
Complex assignment: Create a short documentary about an unusual local
story or person.
Course duration: 8 hours (6 lessons of 60 minutes + filming on location)
Level: 5th grade of Pre-University Education (VWO)
The aim of this course is that students investigate people in their direct
surroundings to discover and film unusual stories in the form of short documentaries.
To introduce the theme, students analyze video reports shown in
‘human interest’ TV shows like Metropolis and Man Bijt Hond. Students
working in teams of 2 or 3 use mind maps to collect their first ideas, which
are discussed during a plenary feedback session. After each team has
determined a theme and prepared a script, they shoot all the material on
location outside school. The edited documentaries are presented, discussed
and peer-assessed in class.
Student work: The Swordsman (video still)
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“These films are… it surprised me that students are able to
make something so upright. They were really good at approaching
other people, not at all clumsy or shy, like they sometimes
pretend to be.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=99)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Production process 18.2% I learned how to prepare an interview
Freedom/independence 13.1% I learned to take initiative
Societal issues/contexts 12.1% I learned about pirates in Somalia
Audiovisual techniques 9.1% I learned how to film
Digital techniques 8.1% I learned that there are good applications
for film editing
Other 39.4%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=15)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 46.6%
No, this was a regular course 46.7%
Other 6.7%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=7)
More learning outside school 28.5% You had to get in touch with people
outside the school
More freedom 28.5% We had to do everything by ourselves
Different pedagogical approach 28.5% These lessons took more effort than usual
Other 14.5%
Case sheets section
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 12
Crack the Code
Christelijk College de Populier, The Hague
Complex assignment: Reflect or comment on the conventions in pop music
by remixing existing music videos.
Course duration: 6 hours (8 lessons of 45 minutes)
Level: 5th grade of Pre-University Education (VWO)
This course has some resemblance to the course Remix the music video that
was described earlier. Both courses deal with conventions in pop videos, but
Crack the code requires students to appropriate existing content, rather
than to shoot new material. Students are advised to ‘cut, paste, enlarge,
repeat, accelerate, decelerate and manipulate’ music videos, using digital
sampling and editing techniques. The goal of this course is that students are
able to discuss genres and conventions in music culture through the creative
manipulation of existing audiovisual materials. Students work in small
teams to develop and execute this assignment. Popular music videos like
Bob Sinclair’s Rock this party and ‘remix-art’ by Eboman and Eddy D are discussed
during the course. After they present their concept and received feedback
from their peers, students continue to collect and sample material
from the Internet. The final, edited movies will be discussed and peerreviewed
in class.
Student work: Schlager/Disco Remix (videostills)
224
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“Teaching them to edit films perfectly was not my main goal.
They had to be able to use editing in such a way that it communicates
their idea. One group found the software we use at school
annoying. They collected footage at school and edited their film
at home.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=72)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Digital techniques 27.8% I learned how to download Youtube
movies
Production process 16.7% I found out that it is difficult to match
movies and music
Cooperation 13.9% I found out that it is difficult to cooperate
with three persons behind a computer
Not experiencing involvement/pride/
talent
8.3% I found out that it was boring to work the
entire time during the course
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 8.3% I learned that I have to work on movies
more often
Other 25%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=15)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 46.7%
No, this was a regular course 53.3%
Other 0%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=7)
Different materials/techniques 42.8% We usually make drawings. We never did
this before.
More freedom 28.5% Because we had more creative freedom
Different pedagogical approach 14.3% You did not have to learn
Other 14.4%
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 13
Multimedia Design for Education
Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna
Complex assignment: Appropriate an artwork from the MAMbo collection to
design an educational video aimed at a pre-defined target audience.
Course duration: 100 hours (25 lessons of 4 hours)
Level: 3rd year students of Art Communication and Didactics
This extensive course was developed by a teacher who is both lecturer at an
art academy and museum educator at MAMbo, Museo d’Arte Moderna di
Bologna. During this project, the museum will function as a client for the
participating students, who are trained as communicative and educational
professionals in the field of art. Main aim of the course is that students operate
as teams who identify and analyze the aesthetic preferences of a specific
target group, and apply them to create a promotional art film, shot on location
in the museum. The course is introduced through contemporary artworks
(Jenny Holzer, Matt Stokes), various trailers and Youtube mash-ups.
Students work in teams of 4 - 7 members during the whole course. Their
activities involve the study of theoretical sources related to audiovisual
communication, an analysis of possible target groups and the design of a
concept and a storyboard. The final films should present an artwork of the
MAMbo collection in an appealing style for the target audience.
Student work: My Limit, My Border (video stills)
226
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“The central idea of this course is to make a crossover between
arts, media and education. In Italy it’s really strange to combine
these different fields. For me it was the perfect combination
because I teach about communication, I am a museum educator
and I like to work with video.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=130)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Production process 27.7% We learned the different phases of a
video production
Cooperation 15.4% I’ve noticed that, even if is really
important to work in team, it’s pretty hard.
Creativity/artistic research 13.1% I’ve learned how an idea on paper in a
form of storyboard is always open to
external inputs and ideas
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 12.3% I’ve experienced that I would really like to
work in the field of advertising
Digital techniques 7.7% I’ve learned how to use Final Cut and
some of this program’s effects
Other 23.8%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=24)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 79.2%
No, this was a regular course 8.3%
Other 12.5%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=19)
More aimed at social contexts 36.9% The difference of this course to others is
the convenience and the implementation
of the theory in the field
Different pedagogical approach 21.1% Yes, I liked this course because it was
complete, The research part, the
storyboard, and the editing part. I have
learned the basics of all the aspects.
More aimed at ideas 10.5% It was an engaging and exciting course.
We worked on a practical project in which
our ideas were central.
Other 31.6%
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 14
Hack Gender Stereotypes
Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam
Complex assignment: Use remix-logic as a research tool to hack gender
stereotypes
Course duration: 16 hours (8 lessons of 2 hours)
Level: 1st year students of Animation, Illustration and Graphic Design
This course is executed in the context of a subject called ‘practice research’
for students of the departments Animation, Illustration and Graphic Design
at the Willem de Kooning Academy. The course aims to expand the students’
knowledge with regard to gender theory and to amplify their analytical
skills by integrating forms of theoretical and creative research. This entails
that the participating students should be able to underpin their creative
work with relevant theoretical and visual sources. Students work individually
and document their research process via an online blog on the basis of
texts related to gender and appropriation, contemporary artworks and different
images from popular comics, games, advertising and films. Their final
work is a personal (audio) visual statement that discusses a particular aspect
of gender stereotypes, supported by a written explanation and relevant
documentation.
Student work: Children in fashion ads (digital print)
228
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Prototyping and Assessment phase
Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“Respondent: I found it most challenging to include examples
from the professional art world in this course. Coming from the
field of media studies, I am really used to addressing the students
with sources that they are familiar with. That feels more
natural, and comfortable.”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=221)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Creativity/artistic research 29.0% I learned to approach my process from a
different angle
Societal issues/contexts 16.7% I learned that everyone has a gender
stereotype
Production process 11.8% I found out that I have to divide the
assignment into different steps
Peer learning/group interaction 9.5% I saw how others perceive this issue
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 7.2% I found out that I find androgyny
fascinating
Other 25.8%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=26)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 19.1%
No, this was a regular course 3.9%
Other 77%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=5)
Different subject matter 20% The lessons were nice, informative, they
help you to look at the world in a different
manner
More aimed at collaboration 20% I talked more to my classmates than usual
More aimed at ideas 20% You were allowed to go deeply into on a
single topic
Other 40%
Case sheets section
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Case sheet 15
The Stolen Moment
Utrecht School of the Arts
Complex assignment: Appropriate imagery from the public domain, in order
to create meaningful images dealing with the notion of ‘the stolen moment’.
Course duration: 24 hours (8 lessons of 3 hours)
Level: 2nd year students of the department of Fine art and Design in Education
The stolen moment was implemented in the context of the photography
curriculum for future art educators at Utrecht’s art academy. The title of the
course refers to the practices of ‘pro-surfers’ (Olson, 2008); artists like
Michael Wolf and Mishka Henner, who ‘take pictures without a camera’ by
appropriating existing images found on the Internet. The aim of the course
is to engage students in a research-based artistic process that examines and
discusses the circulation of images in digital visual culture. Because students
will produce their work through sampling and remixing, appropriation
is both subject and method in this course. During the course, an online
blog functions as a central tool that aids students to document their individual
research process and stimulates the exchange of sources and peer
reflection between classmates. Students present their final works in the
form an exhibition that is assessed together with their verbal explanations
and the documentation on the blog.
Student work: Different Time, Different Life (digital prints)
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Statement of the teacher who designed and implemented the course:
“Because we used an online blog where students reacted on
each other’s work, students had more time to work in class while
I discussed their process individually”
Top 5: Learning experiences of the participating students (N=156)
Category
% of total
statements
Examples of learning statements
Ideas/solutions / creative research 41% I learned that you can start a research
process by using existing images
Peer learning / group interaction 26.9% I noticed that giving and receiving peer
feedback can be useful
Experiencing involvement 7.1% I was surprised by the quality of my final
work
Learning about popular culture 5.1% I discovered that it is fascinating how
many useful pictures I could find on
social media
Not experiencing involvement 5.1% I discovered that I prefer analogue
techniques
Other 14.7%
Did students perceive the course as innovative? (N=28)
Yes, this course was unprecedented 96.4%
No, this was a regular course 3.6%
Other 0%
Top 3: What students found most innovative (N=27)
Different pedagogical approach 77.8% We used a more interactive method for
peer feedback
Different materials / techniques 14.8% Because we had to use existing images
More freedom 7.4 We were allowed to use our personal
fascinations
Other 0%
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9
The
Assessment
Phase
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This chapter describes the implementation and evaluation of fifteen
courses that are based on the model of authentic art education. All
of these teacher-designed courses were executed and evaluated in
the school year 2012-2013 and evaluated by means of interviews with
the teachers involved and learner reports from the participating students.
I will first discuss how teachers perceived the impact of the
implemented courses and learning effects. I will then discuss the
learning effects that were reported by the students. In the final part
of this chapter I will triangulate these results, which will enable me
to answer the research question: what is the impact of the teacherdesigned
lessons on local school practice and which learning effects
do teachers and their students perceive?
9a. How teachers perceived the impact of the courses
In the evaluative interviews, most teachers reported that they were satisfied
with the implementation of their course and with the forthcoming learning
results they perceived among their students. The courses they designed
enabled students to achieve most of the learning goals that were described
in advance and they were able to create the final products that were anticipated
by the teachers. During the interviews, the teachers made evaluative
remarks with regard to the proceedings of the course, the learning process
of students and teachers and their use of the model for authentic art education.
Below, I use the different sections of the tentative model for authentic
art education (figure 27) to structure and discuss these remarks.
Meaningful connections between professional art, popular culture and
societal issues
The interview data confirm that all of the implemented courses were aimed
at forming connections between the worlds of the art professional, the
student and local and global contexts. Such connections were not only
established by learning about these worlds via subject matter and examples
in class, but in many cases students were challenged to actively engage in
these worlds. Whereas most of the learning took place in schools, the teachers
succeeded in creating opportunities for students to enter worlds outside
school, either physically or via the Internet. Authentic art education
does not reject learning in school contexts, but advocates learning in meaningful
and realistic learning environments that are relevant to situations
outside the school (Haanstra, 2001). Possibly the most direct way to achieve
this, is to situate the learning environment directly in one of the three
central ‘worlds’ of the model for authentic art education: the art world, the
world of popular culture and the public domain. This was illustrated by
the courses in this study: sometimes students worked in professional art
settings, they often remixed popular imagery produced by others on the
Internet, and in some courses students were active in the local environment
surrounding the school. Additionally, some teachers tried to make the
school context more lifelike by inviting external experts (colleagues, art
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professionals) to the class who gave guest lectures or participated in an
expert panel.
However, the interview data show that real world learning environments
do not automatically generate authentic experiences for students.
Out of school sites for learning do not inevitably produce meaningful learning
experiences for students (Newmann & Wehlage, 1993). Their degree of
authenticity is largely dependent on how students operate in these real life
contexts: a gallery tour could still be experienced as a very ‘school-like’
activity, and publishing and interacting with others on the Web is a more
immersive activity than when students just appropriate pictures off the
Internet. Most of the lessons took place in the art class, but many teachers
created opportunities that enabled students to operate almost completely
independently outside school, interviewing local citizens, filming in a
museum, or intervening in public space. Several teachers stressed that the
‘realness’ of the learning environment should match the capacities of the
students involved, an aspect of authentic learning that was also brought
forward by Gulikers (2011). During the course Multimedia Design for
Education, art academy students made educational videos for and in the
Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna. The teacher acknowledged this as a
near-professional learning environment for the students, but as this was
the first time for the students he had decided that a professional assignment,
commissioned by the museum, would present the students with
overly complex problems concerning copyright, negotiation with the client
and financial aspects.
Overall, teachers acknowledged that working in real life settings or
interaction with outsiders - even if the interaction was limited - had positive
effects on the students’ motivation and forced them to take more personal
responsibility for learning.
a: Learning is aimed towards the culture of the student
The interview data confirm that all of the courses gave specific attention
to the world of the students, stimulating them to study subject matter
derived from mass culture and/or through the use of popular techniques
like image and video editing, sampling and remixing. One of the effects
the teachers reported was that more popular visual forms have a capacity
to broaden the definition of art in the students’ mind and thus lower the
threshold to more complex forms of art. The teacher of Remix the Music
Video comments:
I started the course by showing popular music videos and subsequently
discussed related contemporary art works. Normally
I feel a slight resistance among my students when I discuss art in
class, but now I sensed a more positive attitude to what I had to
say and got reactions like “O, so this is art too?” They seemed
to approach art with a more open outlook.
However, several teachers experienced that their students were not always
familiar with the latest popular sources that they used in the courses.
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The course A Matter of Time and Space was designed by three teachers and
included several examples of contemporary visual culture related to the central
theme of site-specific art. One of the teachers reports: “It struck us that
many of the students were unfamiliar with the examples we chose, whereas
we specifically selected works that we thought were typically geared to their
time and environment”. Other course proceedings also confirmed that the
fact that students are active in the popular domain does not entail that every
student is an expert in that domain: Media Culture in the Picture dealt with
issues related to digital culture, but the teacher was sometimes surprised
how little knowledge her students possessed about their online whereabouts.
Similarly, various teachers who included popular audio-visual techniques
in their courses found out that their pupils were generally skillful
with digital media, but that many of them had little experience with photo
and video editing techniques. All of these findings show that both students
and teachers can also operate as experts in the domain of popular culture
and that it is a simplification to typify ‘digital native’ youth as digital authorities,
as Selwyn (2009) has argued earlier.
Another insight that was revealed by the course proceedings was
that connections between popular subject matter and professional art are
more regular features of the art curriculum at secondary schools compared
to vocational art schools at the level of higher education. Students
who are trained as art professionals seem to keep their affinity spaces in
popular culture more separated from their art production than secondary
school students, sometimes even when they are challenged to use them
as sources of inspiration. The teacher of the Accademia di Belle Arti di
Bologna was surprised that the future museum educators in his class did
not take their personal experiences to the course. Although his students
had studied video clips, commercials and advertisements, they based their
ideas mostly on the official educational guidelines of the museum. By contrast,
in the two other courses that were implemented at art schools in
higher education, connections between popular culture and professional
art appeared to be more successfully established. The teacher of Hack
Gender Stereotypes reported that some students were critical of the large
amount of popular sources that were discussed, but that most of them
appreciated the subject matter. The teacher of The Stolen Moment noticed
that the course enabled students to connect the private and the professional
domain:
In this course I tried to give the students more space to insert
their expertise and personal worlds into their art. I enjoyed it to
see that students have various ideas about the digital domain
and how it influences their daily life.
It is not surprising that the professional art world is the most prominent
domain in curricula for art professionals, as they are trained to operate
as specialists in this field. However, courses like The Stolen Moment and Hack
Gender Stereotypes show that the study of more popular forms of visual
culture can also add relevance to a curriculum for future art professionals.
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b: Learning tasks are derived from activities performed by art professionals
The world of contemporary professional art was also significantly featured
in the implemented courses through the conceptual artworks and artists
that students discussed and via the assignments that were inspired by present-day
art practices. As this is a common practice for teachers in higher
education, I will focus on the insights that were reported by the teachers
in secondary schools.
Generally, teachers reported positive experiences with the implementation
of contemporary art in secondary schools. The picture that
several teachers drew is that contemporary art is commonly less accessible
than popular culture for students, but definitely not inaccessible. The teacher
of Crack the Code explains:
Many students think that art is silly, but they still want to see it.
When I showed these conceptual videos they did not say ‘turn it
off!, but things like ‘o this is weird’ or ‘why is this art?’ Questions
like that led to good class discussions.
Students often perceive contemporary art as ‘strange’, but many teachers
succeeded in lowering the bar in relation to contemporary art by providing
ample space for discussion and by combining ‘difficult’ works with more
popular visual forms. The teacher of Redesign your Hub noticed that conceptual
art dealing with familiar themes, like the work of ‘hacktivist’ Evan Roth,
was surprisingly accessible for his students. Other teachers observed that
the analysis of contemporary artworks broadened the student’s definition
of art: seeing that art does not necessarily have to be about drawing beautifully
creates processes of identification. Such processes were possibly most
prominent in the course A Matter of Time and Space, where students interacted
directly with contemporary artists in a gallery setting. One of the teachers
illustrated:
I think that when the students talked to the artists, they realized
that an artist’s way of speaking and of producing art was not that
different from theirs. Some of them discussed a really complex
work as if they had made it themselves.
However, where most teachers were pleased with the student’s reception of
contemporary art, several of them noticed that students found it difficult to
apply new art knowledge to their production process and gradually reverted
to the artistic modes they were familiar with. These observations make it
clear that analysis and discussion of professional art needs to be a recurrent
activity during the course, allowing students to integrate this knowledge
with creative processes.
c: Learning is situated in broad societal contexts
Teaching about local and global issues derived from popular culture and art
was one of the most innovative aspects of the implemented courses. Several
teachers mentioned that the incorporation of societal issues in their courses
was demanding, as they are generally used to focus most on the aesthetical
aspects of their subject matter, rather than on its social context.
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Nonetheless, societal contexts were prominent features across the courses,
and the teachers were able to report several related learning effects for
themselves and their students. In most courses the study of local and global
issues supported artistic research and production processes, but in Hack
Gender Stereotypes and Media Culture in the Picture the social contexts formed
the central learning domain. In these courses, visual analysis and artistic
production had a more instrumental function in order to achieve social
learning goals like respectively researching the role of gender in culture
and understanding the impact of digitalization on daily life.
One of the most manifest insights that came forward during the
implementations is that a more contextual approach towards art and popular
culture in class had a capacity to intensify learning aspects related to critical
thinking in the context of art education. This was illustrated by activities
like debates, forms of theoretical research and journalistic enquiries, which
were prominent throughout several of the courses. The teacher of Advertism
formulated an example of such proceedings:
Small teams of students had to organize debates during the
course. Each group would discuss a contemporary artwork in
class and moderate a debate about a social issue the artist
addressed. What I found interesting was that as the series of
debates progressed, students expressed more nuanced opinions
with regard to the issues and the artist’s intentions. Another
positive effect was that the debates strengthened the student’s
confidence to publish their work in public.
In several courses, students had to discuss or write about the backgrounds
of the subject they chose and examined during their research process. In
Re:Icon, a written statement supported the students’ artistic commentary on
a chosen celebrity, which ranged from Mahatma Ghandi to Steve Jobs. Such
research processes prompted class discussions about political, economical
or ethical issues. Many teachers reported that their course stimulated students
to approach artistic production from a more theoretical angle than
usual. A teacher of A Matter of Time and Space explicates: “The students
picked up that contemporary conceptual art not only has formal characteristics,
but that it often relates to historical or social contexts.” One of the
teachers of Kritisign comments: “One student said: ‘I hope that we do not
have to think so much in the next course.’ That signals for me that they had
to put a lot of effort into this course.” Other teachers experienced too that an
increased focus on the social contexts of art and popular culture increased
the level of difficulty for the students. The teacher of Crack the Code explains
this quite clearly:
My regular assignments often lack a social component and
would be formulated as ‘make a video portrait’. However, in
Crack the Code, students have to produce work that critiques the
conventions in music videos, which is more demanding because
they are forced to analyze and adopt a critical attitude. Most students
found that rather difficult.
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The descriptions of the teachers make clear that the learning experiences
they witnessed did not fit the traditional image of art education as a ‘joyful
break’ between other subjects. The inclusion of art and popular culture in
larger socio-cultural contexts in the implemented courses not only encouraged
students to think more and harder, it also influenced the motivation
for art subjects among several of the participating students. The teachers of
Re:Icon reported that the course appealed more than usual to the students
who seek intellectual challenges and who are typically less interested in
art subjects. This observation and the other aspects that I discussed above
seem to confirm that when art education is understood as a broad societal
domain with relations to other subject areas, its capacity to address different
forms of knowledge and skills increases and it becomes more accessible
for students who are not a priori talented or interested in art.
Another insight that is related to the societal domain of the model
of authentic art education is that several of the courses in which local or
global issues were discussed provoked students to participate in different
forms of what David Darts termed ‘creative resistance’:
By encouraging students to interpret, evaluate, and ‘rewrite’ the
shared symbols and meanings of their everyday visual experiences,
visual culture educators can begin to move young people
beyond modes of passive spectatorship and towards more
active and expressive forms of communication with and in the
world around them. And, by promoting active participation in the
sociopolitical sphere through creative cultural production, art
educators can begin to shift their students towards more active
and responsible forms of engagement with the inequities and
injustices of the status quo. (Darts, 2004, p. 317)
In the courses that featured elements of creative resistance in this study, students
participated in a process that involved the deconstruction of a cultural
artifact or issue and the creative construction of a visual comment or
alternative. Most of these artistic social critiques were discussed in a safe
environment like the classroom or an art institute. This is illustrated by a
course like Redesign your Hub in which students actively studied the public
environment surrounding the school, but produced architectural interventions
in the form of drawings and 3d models.
However, in some courses social critique took the form of social
action in the sense that students actively intervened in the social contexts
they studied. The most moderate form of social action was seen in courses
where students published their works on public Internet sites, like in Teach
me how to Dougie and Remix the Music Video. Uploading student work to sites
like Youtube increased possibilities for public exposure and debate, but as
Youtube receives 100 hours of new video every minute (Youtube, 2014), the
online audience was usually limited to the students’ peers, friends and family.
A Matter of Time and Space, Advertism and Hack your Hood took social
action a step further, as the students were asked to physically intervene in
public spaces. In A Matter of Time and Space students used cardboard and
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tape to ‘disrupt’ the public space inside the school, inspired by site-specific
art. Some of these interventions addressed the power relations inside
school, like a group who made a traffic light in a school corridor and a group
who barricaded all the doors and windows of the school director’s office -
with the director inside. This approach fits in with the ideas of art educator
Jorge Lucero, who stated that school culture itself can provide a meaningful
context for conceptual art productions by teachers and students (Lucero,
2013). Advertism engaged students in acts of culture jamming, as they were
asked to criticize a company by altering or remixing their public publicity
material. Some students made a digital mock-up of their intervention, but
others intervened physically in public space: one group placed their remixed
logo inside a store and filmed the public’s reaction while they hid in a locker
room. Another group made an alternative version of the Dutch police logo
and spray-painted it on a wall in the city. Although some of these acts can be
judged as illegal, the teacher noticed that the realistic learning environment
generated a positive learning effect:
What made this course different from my usual courses is
that the students were challenged to show their work in public.
Because of that, I think that every student has more or less
experienced what is to be an artist or someone who makes
a statement in public space.
Serious ethical questions around public space arose in the course Hack your
Hood, which took place at a special school for ‘college dropouts’ in Budapest.
Here, the teacher decided to cancel art production in public space altogether,
because the some students wanted to enter public spaces that were
considered dangerous, like a community of drug addicts, or were planning
to publish works with racist content. The teacher explains:
My hardest challenge in the project was the student’s problem
focus. I wanted them to work with local problems that they were
concerned about and for which they could design new solutions.
But because they focused on these really serious, super lively
problems, like their own drug addictions, they pretty much got
stuck in the problems instead of creating possible solutions.
Paul Duncum (2011), has argued that social action in art education seems
more suitable for higher education than for primary and secondary schools
and requires teachers to operate in a non-authoritarian manner with
regard to the themes and opinions students want to discuss. However, he
considers three arguments in favor of these pedagogies: 1. Public space is
suited to art education because it is an inherently visual space; 2. Social
interventions are regular methods of artists that provide models to
increase the students’ understanding of art practice; 3. Activist art often
takes the form of a ‘play with ideas’, which resembles contemporary art and
media pedagogies that stimulate students to deal with controversial issues
in a playful manner (Duncum, 2011, p. 360). Duncum’s first and second
argument seem to resonate most with the model of authentic art education,
as they imply that art education should include various forms of
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visual culture and that it should strive to engage students in the practices
of professional artists. His third argument, which advocates students
engaging in playful forms of activism, might be the most important factor
that determines where creative resistance defies the line of what is acceptable
in a school context. Most of the assignments and student productions
in this study confirm this playful approach toward creative resistance: they
may address serious matters or problems but mostly in an ironic and
humorous manner, like the cardboard school interventions in A Matter of
Time and Space and the non-destructive logo appropriations in Advertism.
Conversely, the illegal graffiti piece that mocks the police force and the serious
personal problems and controversial issues that students wanted to
explore in Hungary are much less playful and confronted the teachers
involved with pedagogical dilemmas.
Still, as authentic art education proposes that students operate
in meaningful, real world contexts and adopt the attitudes of socially
engaged artists, this implicates that art teachers and students will challenge
the boundaries of the school context to a certain degree. Connecting
realistic issues and contexts to a school art curriculum inevitably entails
that participants will be confronted with serious real world moral and pedagogical
questions (Heijnen, 2012). If teachers want students to experience
art production as a play with ideas, they have to accept that play is not
always innocent and that defining rules, breaking boundaries and activism
belong to its vocabulary (Klatser, 2012). Students involved in or critiquing
the worlds outside school require art teachers to deal carefully and sensitively
with the issues from those worlds, including the ones that are
unpleasant and messy.
In the sections above, I discussed the teachers’ practice-based
understandings that are related to the three dimensions that demarcate the
subject matter of authentic art education. In the next two sections I will
analyze teacher experiences during the implementation phase that are most
related to the pedagogical elements of the model of authentic art education.
Knowledge is constructed in complete & complex task situations
All of the implemented courses consisted of one central assignment that
adheres to the characteristics of a complex task situation: ill-defined and
ill-structured assignments that have no single solution and offer the students
a space for initiative and exploration. The teachers for whom this
pedagogical approach was new generally reported positive experiences.
The teacher of Media Culture in the Picture noticed that her week-long project
in which many teachers and subjects participated had become much more
coherent for the students: “Normally, these projects consist of different,
unrelated lessons and subjects, but now I saw that all the students were
focused on their presentations at the end of the week, which tied together
the whole program.” Some teachers reported that their complex assignments
demonstrated that students had problems to integrate different
forms of knowledge and skills. This was the case in Advertism where the
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teacher reported that some of his students ‘forgot’ to apply the editing
and graphic design skills they had learned in former courses:
Some students are experienced film makers, who know how to
produce a short film. But when I saw some of their results I realized
that they did not integrate or automate that knowledge yet
- hence, a strong argument in favor of complex assignments.
Just like with respect to the ‘realness’ of the learning environment, a major
question the teachers encountered was not if but to what degree assignments
could be open or complex: the complexity of an assignment is not an
objective standard, as it is always related to the level and experience of the
students. Central assignments that may appear fairly structured could be
experienced as rather complex for a specific student population. One of the
teachers of Re:Icon noticed that her assignment was too complex for some
students and she provided the students who could not deal with a lot of
freedom with extra help. Some teachers gave their students extra support
with regard to the central assignment by including teacher prepared checklists
and small subsidiary assignments.
Teachers stressed that assignments that are too complex or open for
the target group are ineffective; students have so many problems to solve
that they are unable to accomplish the learning objectives the course aims
at. The teacher of Advertism explicates:
I found out that there is a critical limit to a complex assignment.
First I thought that the less restrictive my assignment and my role
as a teacher were, the more interesting the learning process
would become. But that proved not to be true.
The teacher of Hack Gender Stereotypes experienced an opposite effect, as
some of her students did not investigate the opportunities the course
offered: “Sometimes I got the idea that I was continuously creating freedom
and opportunities that the students did not use.” These observations can be
related to the writings of Brent Davis and Dennis Samura, who deal with
complexity as a theory of education. Davis and Samura (2002) critiqued the
popular perception of constructivist learning theory as a pedagogy in which
teachers should merely operate as facilitators for learning, avoiding any
form of direct instruction or didactical intervention. Alternatively, Davis and
Samura argue that constraints and rules are needed to facilitate learning
and experimentation. In their view, one of the most challenging tasks for
teachers is to produce enabling constraints: a set of limiting conditions that
open possibilities by limiting choices, like the rules of a game. Enabling constraints
are not prescriptive but expansive, they operate by “defining what
cannot be done - thus opening the door to endless possibility by permitting
everything else” (Davis & Sumara, 2010, p. 859).
The idea of defining enabling constraints is recognizable in the
issues with complex assignments that some of the teachers in this study
experienced. In courses like Kritisign, Re:Icon, Redesign Your Hub and Hack
Your Hood, students had a lot of freedom and could choose the materials and
techniques they preferred. However, for some students, the amount of
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choices proved to be overwhelming, which obstructed their creative process
rather than stimulating it. In A Matter of Time and Space, the teachers strongly
limited the materials in order to achieve an effective balance between
limitations and opportunities: “Because tape and cardboard were the
only materials available, students realized that it was impossible to create
something realistic or esthetical, which forced them to take a conceptual
approach. That was really important for us.” An ‘enabling constraint’ may
seem a paradoxical phrase, but the courses in this study confirm that it is an
important factor regarding complex task situations. Constraints can add
complexity to a course when they force students to abandon the beaten
track and challenge them to explore alternative artistic solutions.
The assignments give scope for students’ initiative, interests and opinions
The interview data indicate that all of the courses provided a substantial
amount of space for the students’ initiative, interests and opinions, which I
partly discussed in relation to the societal issues that were part of the subject
matter. In many cases, the personal interests and fascinations of the student
formed the basis for research and artistic production, resulting in an
overwhelming variety of issues, subjects and opinions that were taken into
class, as exemplified by the teacher of Special Cases: “The students really
enjoyed that they could interview the people they are interested in. One
group filmed a local treasure digger, another a collector of ancient swords…
I think that their fascination for these people made their research more profound.”
The link between personal interests and motivation for learning was
also observed in the courses in which students had to express their opinion
about a societal issue. The students’ interest in the topics they chose contributed
to their motivation to engage in a demanding process of conceptual
artistic production.
However, several courses in this study make clear that addressing the
students’ personal interests does not guarantee their involvement, like the
teacher of Teach me how to Dougie experienced: “Some of the students did not
really think about what they are good at, when I asked them. They just gave
me their routine answer, like ‘I am good at cooking’, or ‘These are my hobbies’.”
Teachers who ask students to choose their favorite subjects and topics
are not automatically rewarded with their devotion in class. When students
feel little engagement with the course, or with school as a whole, they will not
always be willing to share their interests and personal opinions in class.
Some teachers experienced that a connection to the private domain of the
students is sometimes even undesirable. The teacher of Teach me How to
Dougie encouraged her students to film at their homes, but all of them preferred
to shoot the video in and around the school. She attributed this
choice to the fact that most of her pupils are non-Western refugees, who
were not confident or allowed to film at their homes. I already mentioned
the problems that the teacher of Hack your Hood experienced in relation to
her students’ interests: the issues and personal problems her students
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wanted to discuss in class were so intense and complex that they made artistic
production nearly impossible.
The course A Matter of Time and Space took another angle to the student’s
interests and opinions. Here, students were asked to define their own
criteria for the works they were going to produce. The teachers implemented
the course at different schools and noticed that the criteria varied
between the different student populations. Another observation was that
students came up with criteria the teachers never imagined, like the criterion
‘humor’ that one class proposed and applied.
Interdisciplinary production and longitudinal artistic research are stimulated
In relation to subject matter, most courses in this study could by typified as
interdisciplinary because students connected art and non-art subjects during
their research and production processes. In two courses, the integration
of different professional domains was most far-reaching because they
included different aspects of a school’s curriculum. In Media Culture in the
Picture, teachers from different school subjects contributed to the same
complex assignment. Multimedia Design for Education integrated aspects like
communication theory, pedagogy and video production, which are normally
taught separately at the art school in Bologna.
Concerning the integration of different materials, techniques and
arts disciplines, I can conclude that several courses resulted in rather varied
artistic forms, with visual production as the common denominator. Several
teachers stressed that they encouraged students to explore or integrate different
arts disciplines, but that the course’s focus and the teachers’ expertise
are based on the visual. The teacher of The Stolen Moment clarifies:
I teach photography and I really like when students challenge the
boundaries of that discipline, perhaps by producing a performance
or a land art piece. I am not really attached to a specific
art discipline, but the way I think and teach are image-based.
The courses Kritisign and Re:Icon produced the most varied student works in
this study, including sculptures, drawings, and audiovisual productions.
However, the teachers of both courses underlined that an unlimited choice
of materials and arts disciplines was sometimes accompanied by a loss of
quality in the student’s work. The most ‘natural’ way to integrate various
visual with non-visual art forms seemed to occur in the courses in which
students made audiovisual productions. As these productions are interdisciplinary
by default, they provided a coherent space in which students
mixed visual with musical contents, and sometimes presented, directed,
acted or danced.
The question whether the implemented courses managed to
stimulate longitudinal forms of artistic research is hard to answer, as most
courses ran for a limited amount of time. To study this aspect thoroughly it
would be interesting to study the same class during a year and investigate
whether students would reuse a topic or theme over different assignments
or through different final products. However, what I can determine from
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the data is that each of the courses included a substantial amount for
experimentation and investigation and that the quality of the research
process was often part of the final assessment.
Some teachers managed to implement these research-based courses
into a traditional ‘shattered’ school curriculum with lessons of 45 or 50 minutes
and in a brief amount of time (the shortest course ran for six hours).
Such conditions are not ideal for the curriculum I propose and some of the
teachers confirmed that they had a negative influence on the student’s
research and experimentation process. The teacher of Crack the Code: “One
lesson of 50 minutes every week is an impossible working condition for art
education. Students got frustrated because each time they had to wait until
their computers started up, they forgot where they stored their work… The
process seemed endless”. In several courses, teachers reported that students
at regular schools are not used to a more process-oriented approach to learning
art production. The teacher of Special Cases explained that her students
are used to very guided assignments with clear-cut goals in other subjects.
She perceived that influence when her students focused on finishing their
movie without spending enough time to explore ideas or develop an original
concept. Nevertheless, is it noticeable that many of the teachers managed to
blend interdisciplinary and research-based courses at regular schools that
are not used to social constructivist forms of teaching and learning.
The mastery of analogue & digital techniques is instrumental, rather than a goal
in itself
The teachers confirmed that they introduced materials and techniques to
their courses that relate to the practices of contemporary artists and designers.
The materials and techniques their students applied hardly answer to
the image of traditional art education: in twelve courses the most applied
techniques were digital or audiovisual, while classic materials like paper,
pencils and paint played a prominent role in only three courses. The dominance
of audiovisual and digital materials among the courses may not be
very surprising in the light of the course designs, but the fact that the teachers
were able to integrate the mastery of these techniques in the student’s
research and production process is rather noticeable. Until recently, many
teachers in art education admitted that they struggled with the implementation
of audiovisual techniques at regular schools because they were perceived
as ‘too technical, too specialist or too expensive’ for a general art
curriculum (Heijnen, 2007, 2009). Several courses in this study show that
even inexperienced students were able to produce edited films and images
without taking separate technical courses. The teacher of Crack the Code:
“Teaching them to edit films perfectly was not my main goal. They had to be
able to use montage in such a way that it communicates their idea.” What
also drew my attention is that teachers were able to implement audiovisual
courses at regular schools. Their students used standard school computers,
free software and ordinary audiovisual equipment for the production of
their work. Courses like Media Culture in the Picture and Teach me How to
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Dougie even had a ‘bring your own device’ principle, which entailed that
students applied the cameras on their cell phones for creative use.
Ironically, the only course in which many students had difficulty
converting their ideas into artistic productions was the one in which many
students chose the most basic of all techniques: drawing. The teacher of
Redesign your Hub was disappointed that many of his students were unable
to visualize their idea with pencils and paper, despite being 16 years of age:
“To visualize something is hard for them, it frustrates them. Next time I want
to provide them with more strategies that can help them to design their
idea.” I agree with this assumption. The problem students faced during
Redesign your Hub was much less related to their drawing skills than to their
inability to select a technique that matched their skills and their artistic
targets. Drawing can be an effective technique to design architectural interventions
but it is certainly not the only one available to achieve the same
goal. Teachers who want their students to be involved in meaningful forms
of artistic production should try to find a balance between the development
of their conceptual and technical skills. The progression of artistic ideas
needs varied, accessible and stimulating tools to realize those ideas.
The class operates as a learning community in which various forms
of expertise are shared
The interview data partially confirm that teachers in this study used the
implementation process to experiment with the establishment of a learning
community. Most assignments were presented as shared endeavors that
required the involvement and knowledge of both students and teachers.
Several teachers mentioned that they had put effort into involving the lived
worlds of students and that these courses gave them a different understanding
of the student-teacher relationship. The teacher of Hack your Hood
noticed that her relationship with the students was closer than usual: “In
my previous teaching experiences I focused more on the professional than
on the personal domain. Now, I actually developed a close relationship situation
with some of the students”. The teacher of The Stolen Moment testified
that her course showed her that the pedagogy at her art academy was less
student orientated than she had always considered it to be.
The data revealed that building pedagogical relationships based on
trust and responsibility is an important factor with regard to the establishment
of a productive learning community. The teacher of Teach me how to
Dougie explains: “One of the aspects of this experiment that I liked was that
students started to organize things independently. When you show that you
trust them, they will take more responsibility”. Some teachers admitted that
they found it challenging to transfer more responsibilities than usual to the
students. A teacher of A matter of Time and Space: “A lot of it has to do with
relinquishing control to the students. That is really scary sometimes.”
Especially the teachers at secondary schools expressed that it was difficult to
seek balance between teacher- and learner-centered approaches in a context
that demands that teachers be in control.
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Many teachers reported that they learned from the subjects, examples and
skills their students introduced in class. The teacher of Remix the Music Video
explained that the inclusion of popular culture in their course gave her
more opportunities to take the role of a learner. Some of her students found
the music videos she discussed in class somewhat outdated compared to
their current preferences. The teacher admitted that her knowledge of the
latest music videos was limited and she challenged the students to bring
examples to class that they considered being more up to date. Several other
teachers described similar experiences and underlined that their courses
had provided them with good insight into the eclectic interests of the students,
ranging from an Australian religious movement to obscure websites
and from Ghanaian Azonto dance to the life of Beyoncé.
Collaborative production and (online) interaction with people outside the
classroom are encouraged
The teachers in this study convincingly challenged the image of visual
education as a primarily individual endeavor. Collective production was a
prominent aspect in 12 of the 15 courses, and some teachers stressed that
cooperation was one of the main goals of their course. The teacher of
Advertism confirmed that cooperation stimulates interdisciplinary forms
of artistic production: “All of the production groups consisted of a designer
and a filmmaker. I noticed that these duos often exchanged and complemented
their knowledge.” Generally, the teachers found that collaboration
contributed to the research and production processes of their students.
Nevertheless, several teachers did stress that collaborative production
forms involve specific pedagogical challenges that are related to power
relations within groups and motivational or qualitative differences
between group members. A specific problem that was related to the many
audiovisual courses in this study was the insight that group tasks behind
computer screens, like editing, are not very suitable for groups larger than
two people.
Furthermore, I noticed that collaborative student production
seemed to be a more regular feature at the participating secondary schools
than at the art schools at the level of higher education in this study. The
teacher who implemented Multimedia Design for Education in an art
academy was surprised by the results of the collaborative assignment he
implemented: “Some students told me that it was the first time they experienced
that their final video was the result of the contribution of everybody
in the group”. Particularly teachers in secondary education did not
always consider collaborative student production as an innovative aspect
of their courses, as they had applied this regularly in preceding courses.
The interaction between students and people outside the classroom
was fairly limited in most courses. Several courses did include
opportunities for students to interact with ‘outsiders’, but in many cases
communication during learning was more oriented towards the class community
than to external individuals or audiences. The courses in which the
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students really had to discuss, negotiate or collaborate with people outside
school were the ones that featured presentations for external art professionals
(Kritisign), public interventions (Advertism, A Matter of Time and
Space) and interviews with local citizens (Special Cases). Many teachers
acknowledged that publishing work on the Internet could add a realistic
and communicative aspect to the student’s learning experience. However,
some teachers reported that publishing student work on the Internet had
confronted them with issues of safety and privacy, especially when young
students were involved. In several of these courses students did publish
work on the Internet, but teachers took measures to prevent their exposure
to offensive feedback, like creating a closed community or switching
off the “comment”-function on Youtube.
Sampling and remixing are seen as part of artistic processes
Sampling and remixing were prominent features in nine out of fifteen
courses. In Advertism, Hack Your Hood, Transformation and Re:Icon appropriation
formed the central artistic method students used for their productions.
In Kritisign, Remix the Music Video, Crack the Code, Hack Gender
Stereotypes and The Stolen Moment, remixing functioned both as a theme
and as a method: in these courses, students studied the role of appropriation
in visual culture and art, and used contemporary remix methodologies
to produce their work.
That sampling and remixing can lower the threshold to more complicated
forms of artistic production was confirmed by several teachers. In
Hack your Hood, the teacher experienced that simple forms of visual appropriation
can direct students who are not confident about their technical
skills towards more conceptual forms of artistic production:
I wanted to shake them up a little, because they were very
passive. So I took a bunch of free newspapers to class and
asked them to cut them up and remix them into new contexts.
In the beginning they didn’t know what to do with this, but at
the end almost everybody had really funny and smart outcomes.
Every student had a little experience of their own ability to create
something and that was the reason I decided to stick to the
paper cut and paste technique during the whole course.
As remixing is widespread in the popular domain, one could argue that students
might not be challenged when they are asked to apply appropriation
methods in art class. Yet, the ‘remix’ courses that were implemented during
this study seem to point in the opposite direction. Many participating students
were not familiar with remixing as a theoretical discourse or as a
method to produce critical or conceptual forms of art. The teacher of The
Stolen Moment confirmed that her students at the level of higher education
were no exception to that observation: “My students always keep an archive
of images as sources of inspiration, but to apply and present appropriation
as a main artistic method, that was new for many.” In some cases, teachers
found out that appropriation can be harder than producing art from
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scratch, because it requires students to analyze the features and style of a
visual artifact before using or altering it. During Advertism, the teacher perceived
that students who were able to adopt and modify existing corporate
styles produced the most effective public interventions.
Student consultation, presentations and (peer) evaluations are regular features
of the learning process
The pedagogical aspects related to the critical interaction and peer learning
among students were not new for most teachers, but several of them tried
to put an extra emphasis on these aspects during the course. The interview
data confirm that students are able to provide and receive useful peer feedback
when the teacher creates the right pedagogical conditions. Teachers
who planned peer feedback sessions in class stressed that peer consultation
is often time-consuming and requires a systematic pedagogical approach.
Several teachers chose specific moments and forms that enabled students
to mutually discuss their research and work processes. The teacher of
Special Cases reported that such discussion sessions are often more effective
than a single teacher discussing the student’s work individually: “I noticed
that students have no problem being critical towards their colleagues. They
learn both from giving and receiving feedback.”
One of the most innovative aspects related to critical student interaction
was the introduction of blogs and social networks as online spaces
for peer reflection. A successful course concerning online peer feedback was
The Stolen Moment. Here, students received specific instructions regarding
the form and amount of feedback that they had to contribute in response
to the work and examples that their peers posted on a group blog. The
teacher explained how the system of online feedback changed the proceedings
in class drastically:
The group blog forced them to articulate critical reactions to
each other’s research process. This also changed the activities
in class. Normally, my students produce their work at home and
our time in class is used to discuss the work they take along.
Now, everybody was really productive during class hours, which
was appreciated by both students and teacher.
Other teachers who implemented such spaces reported that online platforms
only operate successfully when the teacher takes an active role as
‘webmaster’ who actively encourages students to participate in online peer
discussions. Some teachers admitted that they underestimated their timeconsuming
role as online discussion leader, which reduced the student’s
motivation to respond to each other.
The role of final presentations and authentic forms of assessment
was rather varied throughout the courses in this study. Courses like Remix
the Music Video, Advertism and Re:Icon ended with methodically organized
presentations and didactical forms that enabled a critical role for both students
and teachers in the evaluation process; Media Culture in the Picture,
Multimedia Design for Education Teach and Teach me How to Dougie featured
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presentations with additional teachers who co-assessed the students’ work;
Kritisign focused on the authentic contexts for assessment and organized
the students’ final presentations in an art cinema, where the students were
assessed by an expert panel of teachers and art professionals. An innovative
form of peer assessment was applied in A Matter of Time and Space. The criteria
that students had formulated at the start of the course were used as
guidelines during the production process and as benchmarks for peer
assessment at the end of the course. The teachers of A Matter of Time and
Space noticed that this form of self-assessment generated important learning
effects because it motivated students to be critical towards each other.
Several courses ended without plenary presentations or group
assessments. Most teachers of these courses realized afterwards that they
had not given enough attention to the presentation and assessment in their
course designs, others mentioned that they had run out of time and cancelled
the presentations or peer evaluations. It is remarkable that several
teachers considered their course to be complete when students finished
their production process, which was exemplified by the fact that they asked
students to fill out a learner report before the final presentations or assessments.
Despite the fact that several teachers were experienced with different
forms of group and peer assessment, the evaluation process was a
vulnerable aspect across the courses because some teachers interpreted it
as a mere administrative task rather than as an integral part of the student’s
learning process.
The evaluation of the implementation phase, as perceived by teachers
who designed and executed them, provided me with detailed information
about the course proceedings, both in relation to individual courses and
across the fifteen courses. The teacher’s observations were also useful for
the determination of learning effects with regard to the teachers and their
students. Nonetheless, as the analysis above deals with the perceptions of
teachers, an analysis of the learning effects students perceived during the
same period can add substantial information to the evaluation process. In
the next section, I will discuss the learning outcomes that were reported
by 300 students who participated in the courses their teachers designed
on the basis of the model of authentic art education. These perceived
results enable me to discuss the perceived effects of the courses from the
perspective of the learner and, when triangulated with the course designs
and the teacher’s evaluative remarks, they provide me with a coherent
impression of the model of authentic art education’s impact on varied
local contexts.
9b. The students respond: analysis of learner reports
After each of the courses was finished, the participating students filled out a
learner report with both open and closed questions (see appendix 4). In this
section, I will analyze the students’ learning experiences and relate them to
the learning results that were reported by their teachers.
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Participants and analysis procedure
All classes of the 15 courses that were implemented participated in the
evaluation. After a course ended, teachers handed out the evaluation forms
to the participating students and collected them when they were filled out.
302 students filled out a complete learner report. In most courses, all the
evaluations of students who participated in the course were analyzed.
When different classes in the same school participated, I took a randomized
sample of maximum 35 students, in which variations with regard to class,
student gender and teachers were taken into account. The total amount of
learner reports that were analyzed was 302, of which 180 were completed
by female students and 122 by male students. The average number of completed
learner reports per course was 20; the smallest student group
consisted of 11 participants (Transformation) and the largest student group
consisted of 35 participants (Re:Icon).
Open-ended questions
The method I used to analyze the open questions from the learner reports
was derived from comparable studies by Haanstra and Van der Kamp (1976),
Van der Kamp (1980), Janssen (1998) Van Meurs (2008) and Groenendijk et al.
(2012). The students’ responses to the open questions can be divided into
two types. The first type of answers were formulated as learning statements
(“I learned…”, “I experienced…”, “I noticed …”), and responded to the four
questions that were based on De Groot’s model for learning reports (1980a).
The second type of sentences are answers to the question whether students
perceived their course as dissimilar to regular courses in this subject. These
answers all started with either “yes” or “no” and continued with a motivation
or explanation.
All the statements the students reported were digitized and collected
in a single file. As a next step, these statements were coded: first I coded
each learning statement with a category I induced from the data. Then, two
independent coders used the same categories to code 10% of the statements
and reached a reliability of respectively .90 and .95 (Cohen’s kappa). The
final code schemes are displayed in appendix 5. The coded statements were
then analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics software, version 22.0.
Learning effects related to De Groot’s classification (question 1 - 4)
The 302 participants responded with 2034 learning sentences to questions 1
- 4, an average of 6.7 (SD = 3.2) sentences per student. Students of the course
Media Culture in the Picture reported relatively most learning sentences (M =
11.4 per student), and the students of Advertism reported the lowest amount of
sentences (M = 4.3 per student). These differences in the amount of learning
sentences per student could be caused by different factors, like the motivation
of the students to participate in the evaluation and the time and place of the
evaluation session. Female students reported slightly more learning experiences
(M = 6.7, SD = 3.1) than male students (M = 6.6, SD = 3.3), but this difference
is not significant (t(300) = .120, p = .905). The total average of learning
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sentences that were reported in this study is quite low compared to the average
of 14.9 in Van der Kamps’ (1980) study. However, in that study students
reflected on their two-year examination phase, whereas the reports in my
study evaluated a learning process of just several weeks. The average results
of my project are comparable to the more similar study by Groenendijk et al.
(2012), in which the average student reported 7.3 learning experiences.
Table 14 displays how the 2034 learning sentences are distributed
over the four evaluation questions derived from De Groot’s classification of
learning objectives (1980a). The distribution of learning experiences is comparable
to other learner report studies: the first question students encountered
generated the most answers, and the questions related to surprises
and exceptions (2 and 4) produced fewer answers than the questions related
to rules (1 and 3). However, these numbers are not completely accurate
because I noticed that several students seemed to have reported learning
experiences in the wrong category. Common mistakes were that students
confused learning about rules with surprises, or learning about the world
with learning about themselves. Because it was often hard to determine to
which of De Groot’s categories a learning sentence should be attributed,
I decided to discard the categories altogether during the analysis process.
This decision coincides with Van der Kamp (1980), who concluded that
De Groot’s classification is useful to generate a diversity of learning experiences,
but rather unpractical as an instrument to classify those learning
experiences afterwards. I therefore analyzed all of the reported learning
sentences as one category and used the coding scheme and a taxonomy of
learning domains to classify them.
In table 15, the learning experiences of the students across all courses
are rubricated under the categories that were induced from the data.
However, an overview based on absolute amounts of reported learning experiences
is not unambiguous because the amount of participating students
varied per course. As the courses present different techniques, themes and
proceedings they may produce different learning experiences. Courses with
De Groot’s learning
objectives
A. Rules of the world:
answers and methods
Questions in
this study
Reported
learning
experiences
(absolute)
1 What did you learn? 731 35.9%
B. Surprises of the world 2 Surprises/exceptions 423 20.8%
C. Rules regarding myself:
capacities and limitations
D. Surprises regarding
myself: exceptions to
preconceptions
3 What did you learn
about yourself?
4 Surprises/exceptions
about yourself
517 25.4%
363 17.8
Total: 2034 100%
Table 14: Distribution of the reported learning sentences over De Groot’s classification of learning objectives
Reported
learning
experiences
(percentage)
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a lot of participants would have a bigger influence on the results than the
ones with fewer participating students. To solve this problem, I first calculated
the learning experiences over the categories for each course, in percentages.
I then calculated the average percentages per category across the
fifteen courses. The result is an overview of the thematically classified
student learning statements, based on the average percentages of the outcomes
in each course (table 16). Because each course has an equal influence on
the total percentages, the outcomes in each category diverge somewhat
from the absolute calculation in table 15. The large standard deviation in
many of the categories indicates that the differences between the types of
learning experiences that were reported varied substantially between the
courses. A top five of the learning outcomes students reported in each individual
course is displayed in the case sheets section.
In order to discuss the students’ learning experiences in relation to
different types of knowledge I categorized the total percentages under four
knowledge domains, as shown in table 17. The division of knowledge types
is derived from a taxonomy that was formulated by Seidel, Perencevich, and
Kett (2007). Seidel and colleagues divided knowledge into four different
knowledge domains: cognitive, psychomotor, interpersonal and affective.
Category
Absolute amount
and % of reported
learning experiences
Creativity/artistic research 280 (13.8%)
Societal issues/contexts 252 (12.4%)
Production process 192 (9.4%)
Not experiencing involvement/
pride/talent
164 (8.1%)
Art 163 (8.0%)
Digital techniques 161 (7.9%)
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 159 (7.8%)
Peer learning/group interaction 139 6.8%)
Cooperation 110 (5.4%)
Audiovisual techniques 77 (3.8%)
Character/personal qualities 75 (3.7%)
Popular visual culture 75 (3.7%)
Freedom/independence 58 (2.9%)
Other 53 (2.6%)
Other visual techniques 41 (2.0%)
Analyzing/criticizing sources 19 (0.9%)
Theatre, dance and music 16 (0.8%)
total 2034 (100%)
Table 15: Thematically classified student learning statements, absolute and (percentage), in rank order
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The cognitive domain refers to forms of knowledge that are needed for
logical and critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making. The
psychomotor domain refers to knowledge related to physical actions and
perceptual acuity. As ‘technical skills’ is a more common phrase than ‘psychomotor
skills’ in the context of arts education, I preferred to use that term
as a knowledge category in this study. The interpersonal domain refers to
knowledge that is needed to deal with the social habits and skills of others.
The affective knowledge domain refers to knowledge needed to deal with
one’s personal attitudes, motivations, and habits (Seidel et al., 2007).
Table 17 displays the average percentage of learning experiences
per category across all courses in this study, rubricated under the four
knowledge domains. To create a more intricate structure for the rather general
cognitive domain, I operationalized the cognitive domain as the three
sub-domains: declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge (Woolfolk,
2004). Declarative knowledge refers to verbal information and facts: ‘knowing
that’; procedural knowledge can be typified as knowledge in action:
‘knowing how’; conditional knowledge is the most complex cognitive
category, because it refers to the combined application of declarative and
procedural knowledge: ‘knowing when and why’ (Woolfolk, 2004, p. 230).
Category
Reported learning
experiences
(based on the average
percentage per course)
Creativity/artistic research 12.8% 10.47
Production process 10.3% 7.62
Digital techniques 9.8% 11.76
Societal issues/contexts 8.7% 11.75
Art 8.4% 12.91
Experiencing involvement/pride/talent 8.0% 2.75
Not experiencing involvement/pride/talent 7.2% 9.22
Peer learning/group interaction 7.0% 7.13
Cooperation 6.9% 7.56
Character/personal qualities 4.5% 3.16
Audiovisual techniques 4.0% 6.09
Popular visual culture 3.3% 4.69
Freedom/independence 3.0% 3.58
Other visual techniques 1.7% 2.61
Theatre, dance and music 0.8% 1.17
Analyzing/criticizing sources 0.8% 1.71
Other 2.8% 3.20
total 100%
Standard
deviation
(variation across
courses)
Table 16: Thematically classified student learning statements (percentages based on averages per course, rank ordered)
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Category Cognitive domain Tech nical
Declarative Procedural Conditional
domain
knowledge knowledge knowledge
Interpersonal
domain
Affective
domain
Unknown
Creativity/
artistic research
12.8%
Production
process
10.3%
Digital techniques 9.8%
Societal issues/
contexts
8.7%
Art 8.4%
Experiencing
involvement/
pride/talent
Not experiencing
involvement/
pride/talent
8.0%
7.2%
Peer learning/
group interaction
7.0%
Cooperation 6.9%
Character/
personal qualities
4.5%
Audiovisual
techniques
4.0%
Popular visual
culture
3.3%
Freedom/
independence
3.0%
Other visual
techniques
Theatre, dance
and music
1.7%
0.8%
Analyzing/
criticizing sources
0.8%
Other 2.8%
Subtotal 20.4% 11.1% 15.8%
Total (100%): 47.3% 16.3% 13.9% 19.7% 2.8%
Table 17: Thematically classified student learning statements, divided over knowledge domains
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Learning results in the cognitive domain
One of the most prominent outcomes of this evaluation is that nearly half of
all learning experiences students reported relate to the cognitive knowledge
domain. This outcome shows that the designing teachers succeeded indeed
in implementing art courses that challenged students to learn about both
facts and procedures and engaged them in processes related to logical, creative
or critical thinking. This result indicates that art courses that include
rich sources and a research-based approach toward artistic production
encompass more than just ‘working with your hands’, and that a popular
division between ‘the cognitive subjects’ and art education is quite artificial.
Below, I will discuss the distribution of learning experiences over the different
cognitive sub-domains in detail.
The sub-domain of declarative knowledge mirrors the subject matter
from the worlds of popular culture, professional art and societal contexts, as
represented in the model of authentic art education. The emphasis on social
contexts in their courses is reflected in the learning results that students
perceived, as the amount of learning experiences concerning societal issues
(8.7%) is even slightly higher than knowledge about art. The reported learning
experiences about societal issues are very varied and include responses
like: “I learned what a hub is”; “I learned that third gender is accepted in
some cultures outside the Western world” and “I learned that social media
sell your identity to companies”. In courses like Media Culture in the Picture
(40.6%), and Kritisign (25.9%), students reported learning about societal
issues as the most important learning results.
8.4% of the learning experiences are related to knowledge about art
and include responses like: “I discovered that there is not only motionless
art but also film art”; “I learned expressions from the world of contemporary
art” and “I learned that art can be critical”. The students who participated in
the course A Matter of Time and Space reported the most learning experiences
related to art knowledge: 51.9%. This high amount can be explained by the
fact that the students not only analyzed artworks in the realistic context of
an art institute, but also actively shared their thoughts with the exhibiting
artists. That many students across the courses reported to have gained more
knowledge about art and artworks may not seem a significant outcome in
the context of an art course. However, I still consider this result as quite
noteworthy since most courses presented contemporary and conceptual artworks,
which were apparently recognized by many participants as relevant
sources of knowledge.
The responses in the category popular visual culture (3.3%) are also
quite varied and include learning sentences like: “I was surprised how the
Hollywood industry works”; “I learned what a remix is”; and “I learned that
the authenticity of images suffers from the digital culture”. The relatively
low percentage of learning experiences related to popular culture is quite
surprising, as students studied popular subject matter throughout almost
all courses. My assumption is that students may consider their understandings
of popular culture as common knowledge, not significant enough to
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be reported in an evaluation. This conclusion is supported by the relatively
high percentage of learning experiences related to popular culture from
students who participated in Remix the Music Video (18.8%), the only course
in which students had to produce a formal written analysis and review of
music videos.
A substantial amount of learning experiences were rubricated in
the domain of procedural knowledge. Here, most learning experiences related
to the production process (10.3%), where most students reported that the
courses helped them to gain more insight in the way artistic production
processes are shaped and organized. Responses include sentences like: “I
learned that it is quite hard to match film with music”; “I learned that you
can make something big and beautiful in a short amount of time”; and “I
learned that it takes me too long to make a drawing”. It is illustrative that
the students of Multimedia Design for Education, who were not used to integrating
their knowledge about communication and education in an artistic
process, reported the highest percentage of learning experiences in this
category: 27.7%.
The emphasis many courses put on analysis and discussion of subject
matter is not reflected in the outcomes of the open learner reports.
Students did report that they learned about art-related subject matter, but
the methods they used to acquire this knowledge were sparsely reported as
a contribution to their cognitive skills. The low percentage in the category
analyzing/criticizing sources (0.8%) indicates that methodologies for art
analysis and critique were not specifically addressed during most courses.
These are some examples of how students described their experiences in
this category: “I learned to analyze work from different angles”; and “I
learned how to write a review”.
The domain of conditional knowledge is the kind of knowledge that
is central in creative processes, because students need to explore different
ideas and match them with artistic procedures that are most effective for
the translation of those ideas into concrete artifacts. The highest overall percentage
in this evaluation appeared in the category ideas/solutions/creative
research: 12.8%. The learning sentences that were reported in this category
referred to processes of creative thinking and artistic research and included
sentences like: “I realized that I cannot always make the things that are in
my head”, “I realized that I should not always be satisfied with my first idea”,
“I noticed that I learned to think more creatively” and “I learned how to formulate
questions about my own process”. The highest percentages in this
category appeared in the courses that put most emphasis on creative
research and that provided most time and space for the students to reflect
on those processes. Two courses that were implemented at the level of higher
education, Hack Gender Stereotypes and The Stolen Moment, produced the
highest percentages in this category, respectively 29.0% and 41.0%. It is not
surprising that courses implemented at the level of higher education produced
the highest percentages in this category, but it is remarkable that
even in courses that ran for a relatively short amount of time, students
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reported many learning experiences that were related to experimentation
and creativity.
A category associated with creativity and artistic research relates to
all the learning sentences I classified under the category freedom/independence.
These are the learning sentences in which students expressed experiences
related to a freedom of choice and the independence to organize their
artistic and productive processes. The overall result in this category was
3.0%, and it includes sentences like: “I discovered that discovering things by
myself works better that when someone explains them to me”; “I learned
that I have to plan things better”; and “I noticed that I was allowed to do
what I wanted”.
Learning results in the technical domain
Overall, 16.4% of the students’ learning experiences were related to the
technical knowledge domain. These experiences often had a procedural
character, but these procedures were assigned to the technical domain
because they were closely related to the students’ ability to work with materials,
practical equipment and technologies. The substantive amount of
technical learning experiences confirms an insight that was retrieved from
the teachers, who formulated that technical advancement was an integrated
aspect of their courses. Most courses were aimed at the advancement
of conceptual and artistic goals, but the teacher and student evaluations
confirm that such courses are capable of developing and strengthening
the students’ technical skills regarding the materials and techniques that
they used during these processes.
Since many students used digital and audiovisual technologies
during their courses, the high percentages of digital (9.8%) and audiovisual
techniques (4.0%) are congruent with the course designs and the teachers’
evaluative remarks. With respect to digital techniques, students reported
learning experiences like: “I learned how to use digital film edit software”;
“I learned how to use a digital photo application” and “I learned how to use
search programs on a computer”. Reported sentences that relate to audiovisual
techniques were: “I learned how to use different camera angles”; “I
learned how to make a stop-motion movie”; and “I learned how to operate
a camera”. The percentages in these categories were the highest in courses
in which digital and audiovisual techniques were introduced to young and
inexperienced students: most students who participated in Transformation
worked with a digital image program for the first time and 43.5% of their
learning experiences were related to digital techniques. The students who
made their first movie during Teach me How to Dougie reported 18.8% in the
audiovisual techniques category.
The low percentage in the category of other visual techniques (1.7%)
is somewhat surprising since several teachers stressed that their courses
challenged students to use varied visual techniques. My interpretation of this
outcome is that students used different visual materials in several courses,
but that the ubiquitous presence of digital and audiovisual techniques
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overshadowed learning effects in relation to other visual techniques.
Learning experiences in this category include sentences like: “I learned
how to make a collage”; I learned that water paint does not work with grease
pencils”; and “I learned that it is difficult to make a realistic drawing”.
The low overall percentage in the category of other arts techniques,
like theatre, dance and music (0.8%) does correspond with the teacher’s evaluations.
Techniques in other arts disciplines were integrated in some of the
courses, but almost none of the students produced work in disciplines that
were unrelated to visual art. Some examples of the learning experiences in
this category: “I learned that I am a reasonably capable actor” and “I learned
how to make beats on a computer”.
Learning results in the interpersonal domain
The interpersonal knowledge domain refers to social skills, like dealing with
others’ social habits, leadership and cooperation. With a percentage of 13.9 of
all learner experiences, the interpersonal domain is convincingly represented
amongst the other knowledge domains. This outcome verifies the prominent
role of collaboration and student interaction during the courses that
came forward in the course designs and the interviews with the teachers.
Peer learning and group interaction is the category that received
most learning experiences in the interpersonal domain. 7% of the reported
statements were related to this category, which included sentences like:
“I learned that we agreed on our subject”; “I was surprised by the positive
feedback I received on my film”; “I learned to observe the work of other
students critically”.
The high percentage of 26.9 as reported by participants of the The
Stolen Moment with regard to peer learning confirms that the digital discussion
platform that was implemented was an effective tool for peer feedback.
With an outcome of 6.9%, the cooperation category is comparable
to the peer learning and group interaction category. With regard to cooperation,
students reported many learning sentences that were related to collaborative
tasks and processes in small production groups, which included:
“I was surprised how well cooperation worked in our group”; “I learned to
cooperate better”; and “I’ve noticed that it is important but pretty hard to
work in a team”. The course in which the students reported relatively the
most learning experiences related to cooperation (22.4%) was Hack your
Hood. This high percentage can be related to the situation that many
students in this class seemed to be unfamiliar with collaborating and were
positively surprised by the cooperative capacities of their classmates, as
illustrated by one of the students’ statement: “I realized that something can
not only be done alone, but in a group too”.
Learning results in the affective domain
The affective domain encompasses skills to deal with oneself; motivations,
habits and self control (Seidel et al., 2007, p. 115). Overall, the amount of
learning statements in this category is quite high (19.7%). They express the
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students’ motivation to participate in the course and ideas about their
capacities, often based on both positive and negative learning experiences.
The two categories with the most reported learning statements are
the ones associated with experiences related to involvement, pride and talent,
both in a positive (8.0%) and negative sense (7.2%). Positive experiences
related to involvement during the course include sentences like: “I found
out that I learned a lot and I am proud of myself”; “I found out that contemporary
art is meaningful for me” and “I found out that I am good at doing
research”. Negative experiences were described as follows: “I learned that
I do not like film”; “I learned that art is not my thing”; “I learned that I am
absolutely not creative”. The positive experiences related to involvement
and talent were quite comparable across the individual courses. The results
in relation to negative experiences with involvement and talent were severely
influenced by the course Redesign Your Hub, in which 37% of the learning
sentences were reported in this category. This outcome corresponds with
the evaluation of the teacher involved, who stated that many of his students
had problems visualizing their ideas during the course, which often caused
frustration.
4.5% of the learning experiences across the courses were reported in
the category character and personal qualities. This category relates to learning
about general personal qualities and traits, and features learning sentences
that were formulated as follows: “I experienced that I must learn to
have more patience”; “I was surprised about how critically I look”; “I learned
that I should not be indecisive”.
The experiences related to the affective knowledge domain were
almost never formulated as learning goals by the teachers. This demonstrates
that learner reports have a capacity to reveal the students’ learning
experiences that were not intended by the teacher and that are hard to
assess with traditional instruments.
Was this course different to other courses? (question 5)
The fifth open question in the student evaluation aimed to investigate if
students perceived the course in which they participated as different to
their usual courses in the same subject. 302 students reported 335 answers
to question 5. Generally, students provided one answer, but when a student
used two or more arguments to underpin their opinion, the arguments
were separated into two distinct answers.
Table 18 displays that most of the students perceived the course
they participated in as distinctive from regular courses. 69.6% of all
answers testified that the course or aspects of the course were seen as new,
innovative or just ‘different’ in the eyes of the student. 19.7% of the answers
testified that the course was perceived as a regular course and 10.7% were
responses that did not answer the question at all, or that indicated a student
had never participated in such a course until that time. When I ignore
the reactions of the students who were unable to answer question 5 (the
‘other’ category), over three quarters of the answers confirmed that the
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course was different. These results confirm that most teachers who participated
in this study experimented with the subject matter or the pedagogy
of their courses and were able to implement such courses in an existing
organization and curriculum.
To provide an insight into what students found different of the
course they attended, I categorized all the 228 positive responses to question
5 (see table 19). Most reactions referred to the pedagogical approach as the most
uncommon feature of the course (23,5%). The answers in this category vary
to a great extent, as the following examples illustrate:
“We really studied a single topic during the course”;
“The lessons were all related to each other”
“These lessons were more challenging”
“It was a combination between making and analyzing art”;
“We responded and communicated more interactively”
The responses in this category may seem quite unrelated, but nearly all
reactions can be traced back to the pedagogical aspects of the model of
authentic art education as they were operationalized in the different
Category
Amount of answers
(based on the average
percentage per course)
Standard
deviation
Amount of
answers
(absolute)
Yes, this course was different 69.6% 27.29 228
No, this was a regular course 19.7% 21.96 68
Other 10.7% 20.54 39
total 100% 335
Table 18: Did students perceive the course as different?
“Yes, this course was different,
because…”
Category
Amount of answers
(based on the average
percentage per course)
Standard
deviation
Different pedagogical approach 23.5% 18.01 62
More freedom 21.4% 17.85 50
Different materials/techniques 14.9% 15.55 33
More learning outside school 8.3% 16.26 17
More aimed at collaboration 7.8% 17.39 17
Different subject matter 6.3% 10.10 16
More aimed at social contexts 3.3% 9.83 9
More aimed at ideas 3.2% 6.19 5
More theory 1.2% 4.83 3
Not specified 10.1% 20.38 16
total 100% 228
Table 19: What students found most different about the course
Amount
vof answers
(absolute)
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courses. Hence, these reactions verify the teachers’ pedagogical interventions
that were inspired by the model of authentic art education.
Another prominent reason why students found their course different
was that they had experienced more freedom (21.4%) than during comparable
courses. The answers in this category include: “We were much more
free and we could take the time we needed”; and “You were allowed to
choose you own subject” and “You took your own decisions”. The great quantity
of learning experiences in the freedom category is comparable to the
outcomes related to creative research and freedom in the conditional
knowledge domain that I discussed earlier.
In 14.9% of the responses, students reported that their course was
unusual because of the materials and techniques that were applied. Almost
all of the answers in this category refer to digital and audiovisual techniques,
as illustrated by these statements: “We made effects on the computer”;
“Normally we draw or use 3-dimensional techniques”; and “We do not
create a video usually”. Such answers confirm both that digital and audiovisual
techniques were prominent in many courses, and also that many
students perceived them as irregular techniques in art courses.
The rest of the affirmative responses to question 5 were assigned to
categories with percentages fewer than 10% of the total amount of positive
responses. Since the amounts and percentages in these categories are quite
small I will not analyze them extensively. However, these categories verify
the innovative features of the courses as they were discussed throughout
this study, like an extra focus on learning outside school (8.3%); on
collaboration between students (7.8%); on diverse subject matter (6.3%);
on social contexts (3.3%); on idea development (3.2%) and on theory (1.2%).
Closed-ended questions
The second part of each learner report consisted of 20 closed questions
(appendix 4), which were all derived from the model of authentic art education
and aimed to investigate to what extent students perceived an influence
of the model during their courses. The closed questions were a separate
part of the learner report, which the same 302 students completed after they
finalized the open questions. The completed questionnaires were digitized
and analyzed. To detect underlying patterns within the data set, I executed
an exploratory factor analysis. This enables the researcher to identify and
group correlating items. A group of items functions as a scale, which is considered
more reliable than a single item. A common rule of thumb for a reliable
factor analysis is that at least 10 - 15 participants are needed per item of
a questionnaire (Hof, 2012). As this questionnaire consists of 20 items and
302 participants, the average amount of participants per item is 15.1, which
justifies the choice for a factor analysis.
The factor analysis (table 20) enables me to interpret factor 1, 2 and 3 as
meaningful patterns with regard to the model of authentic art education.
Therefore, the items that were grouped in factor 1, 2 and 3 were converted
into separate scales. The resulting scale score for a student is the mean of the
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individual item scores. Hair, Black, Babin, and Anderson (2010) have stated that
a minimum of 3 - 4 items per scale is required to cover and identify a pattern
as a theoretical domain. Scales 1 - 3 meet that condition because they cover
between 7 - 5 items. Cronbach’s alpha measures the reliability of each scale that
was distilled from the data set. Generally, a pattern is considered acceptable
when Cronbach’s alpha is > 0.7 (Tavakol & Dennick, 2011). Since the α of all three
sub-sets in this questionnaire is greater than 0.7 (see table 21), reliability seems sufficient.
Together, the three scales cover 17 of the 20 items in the questionnaire.
The three remaining items were discarded, as they did not load significantly on
any of the three factors and neither did they form a reliable additional sub-set
(scale 5). I decided to disregard scale 4 because I could not relate it to the model,
neither was I able to interpret it in an exploratory manner.
Scales 1-3 (table 21) can be characterized as subsets with characteristics
strongly related to the three main sections of the model of authentic art education.
In the following paragraphs I will discuss these outcomes in further detail.
Factors (factor loadings < .3 are not shown)
1 2 3 4 5
Items
Question 18 .713
Question 8 .599
Question 10 .647
Question 6 .372
Question 14 .553
Question 11 .695
Question 20 .357
Question 9 .442 .408
Question 17 .499
Question 7 .746
Question 16 .703
Question 13 .733
Question 15 .623
Question 19 .439 .453 -.546
Question 22 .345 .442 .505
Question 23 .787
Question 24 .787
Question 25 .699 .402
Question 12 .660
Question 21 .723
explained variance 25.8% 9.3% 8.3% 7.3% 5.2%
Table 20: Exploratory factor analysis (with varimax rotation)
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Scale 1: Complex task situations
The first scale measures the extent to which students perceived their course
as a whole, and how much space they had to explore their interests, express
their opinions and choose the materials and techniques they preferred (table
22). This scale has large similarities with the design principle ‘knowledge is
constructed in complete & complex task situations’ of my model, excluding
the items related to artistic research, which did not load on this factor.
With an average of 3.67 overall on a 1-5 point scale, I can deduce that
students evaluated the task situations as complex and complete. The courses
with the highest outcomes on this scale, like Re:Icon, Multimedia Design for
Education and Kritisign can be interpreted as the ones that most succeeded
in implementing an assignment that was both perceived as a whole and that
offered students a complex learning process that addressed their personal
interests and included activities like planning, decision making, forming
opinions and choosing artistic forms. The two courses at the bottom on this
Scale 1
N = 7
Scale 2
N= 5
Scale 3
N = 5
Subsets
Cronbach’s
α
Items
.775 6. I have experienced the course as a whole
14. The assignments challenged me and my
classmates to work independently
9. There was space for my personal
knowledge and interests in this course
17. I could give my personal opinion in this
course
7. I was allowed to use other art forms than
visual art during this course
16. I was allowed to mix different art forms
during this course
13. I was allowed to choose the materials and
techniques I preferred during this course
.730 19. I collaborated with classmates during this
course
22. I gave my opinion about my classmates’
work during this course
23. At the end of the course, I presented my
work
24. At the end of the course, I explained my
work
25. I assessed the work of classmates during
this course
.702 18. I learned about popular culture during this
course
8. I have learned about art and artists during
this course
10. I have learned about issues outside the
arts during this course
20. I tried out different ideas during this course
15. I have learned from others during the
course
Relation with the
model of authentic
art education
Knowledge is
constructed in
complete and
complex task
situations.
The class operates
as a learning
community in which
various forms of
expertise are
shared.
Meaningful
connections
between professional
art, popular
culture and societal
issues.
Table 21: Scales derived from the factor analysis
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Scale 1 Complex task situations N Scale
mean
Re:Icon 35 4.11 .47
Multimedia Design for Education 18 4.06 .49
Kritisign 24 4.02 .89
Media Culture in the Picture 25 3.89 56
Hack Gender Stereotypes 28 3.84 .52
Transformation 11 3.74 .63
The Stolen Moment 18 3.71 .49
Teach me how to Dougie 15 3.69 .59
Crack the Code 15 3.68 .78
Hack Your Hood 15 3.66 .78
Remix the Music Video 27 3.60 .59
Special Cases 15 3.60 .66
Advertism 15 3.50 .53
A Matter of Time and Space 13 2.89 .55
Redesign Your Hub 28 2.75 .85
total 302 3.67 .74
Table 22: Scores on scale 1: Complex task situations
Standard
deviation
Scale 2 Learning community N mean Standard
deviation
Multimedia Design for Education 18 4.39 .45
Crack the Code 15 4.12 .68
Media Culture in the Picture 25 4.10 .53
A Matter of Time and Space 13 4,08 .87
Teach me how to Dougie 15 3.99 .35
Remix the Music Video 27 3.79 .67
Advertism 15 3.67 .40
Kritisign 24 3.48 .79
Re:Icon 35 3.47 .56
Hack Your Hood 15 3.28 1.13
Transformation 11 3.09 .81
The Stolen Moment 18 3.08 .41
Special Cases 15 2.59 .79
Hack Gender Stereotypes 28 2.51 .65
Redesign Your Hub 28 1.86 .71
total 302 3.37 .97
Table 23: Scores on scale 2: Learning community
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scale show that a low score in complex task situations can either indicate
that a course lacked complexity or that it was too complex: the teachers
of A Matter of Time and Space explained that they limited the complexity
of the assignment in order to make it more effective, whereas the teacher
of Redesign Your Hub interpreted his assignment as too complex because
students could not deal with the amount of choices they had to make.
Scale 2: Learning community
The second scale measures the extent to which the students experienced
that their class operated as a learning community during the course (table 23).
It is based on questions that inquired whether the students found that they
had collaborated, presented and explained their work to peers, and whether
they critiqued and assessed the work of their peers. I can identify a relationship
between this scale and the model of authentic art education, as it
covers many aspects of design principle e: the class operates as a learning
community in which various forms of expertise are shared.
With an overall average of 3.37, the implementation of learning
communities was moderately successful across the courses. However, a high
standard deviation (.97) shows that in several courses learning communities
were successfully established, while they were hardly realized in other
courses. Regarding the courses with high outcomes on this factor, I can
conclude that aspects like cooperative production, peer learning and peer
assessment were prominent and coherent aspects of the same learning
arrangement. The teacher interviews revealed that the lower scores on this
scale could be explained by the fact that several teachers were unable to
organize student presentations at the end of their courses, as was the case
in The Stolen Moment, Transformation, Hack Gender Stereotypes, Special Cases
and Redesign Your Hub.
Scale 3: Meaningful connections
The scale for meaningful connections (table 24) entails a correlation between
five items in the questionnaire: idea formation; learning from others; and
the study of popular culture, professional art and societal issues. My interpretation
of this scale is that the study of art and art related sources and
contexts supported the students’ ability to develop different ideas during
their artistic processes. Students limited ‘learning from others’ not to their
classmates, but included the designers, artists and other experts they met
during the course or that were represented by the visual and textual artifacts
they discussed in class. The scale indicates that the study of art, visual
culture and societal issues indeed becomes ‘meaningful’ when students can
apply that knowledge to their artistic production processes.
With an average score of 3.19 on this scale, I can conclude that the
influence of meaningful connections was moderate across the courses. In a
course like Multimedia Design for Education students reported high scores on
this scale (3.88), whereas the score was substantially below average in courses
like Re:Icon and Redesign Your Hub. My interpretation is that the students
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who took part in the courses with lower scores did not discuss subject matter
extensively, or that students were not able to apply this knowledge during the
productive parts of the course. A high score with regard to meaningful connections
does not necessarily entail that students studied a lot of subject matter
during these courses, but that learning about art, popular culture and
societal issues related to their creative process, or vice versa.
When I compare the results of the individual courses across the three
scales, Multimedia Design for Education and Media Culture in the Picture have
consistently high scores, whereas Redesign Your Hub received the lowest score
on all three scales. As the aim of this questionnaire was to discover to what
extent courses reflected the characteristics of authentic art education, these
outcomes should not be interpreted as ratings for the success or quality of
the individual courses as such. My interpretation is that the teachers of
Multimedia Design for Education and Media Culture in the Picture implemented
the characteristics of authentic art education most consistently. In case of
Redesign Your Hub, the interviewed teacher and the open learner reports of
the students confirm that there was a tension between the intended, implemented
and attained curriculum. The intended curriculum reflected many
characteristics of authentic art education, but some of these aspects proved
to be problematic during the implementation process, which caused many
students to become frustrated or demotivated.
The analysis of the outcomes of closed learner reports is the last
section of the student evaluation. Together with the results of the teacher’s
Scale 3 Meaningful connections N mean Standard
deviation
Multimedia Design for Education 18 3.88 .57
Media Culture in the Picture 25 3.68 .56
The Stolen Moment 18 3.64 .67
Hack Gender Stereotypes 28 3.58 .50
Hack Your Hood 15 3.51 .78
A Matter of Time and Space 13 3.38 .51
Advertism 15 3.32 .79
Kritisign 24 3.18 .78
Remix the Music Video 27 3,13 .44
Teach me how to Dougie 15 3.11 .82
Transformation 11 2.96 .67
Crack the Code 15 2.85 .91
Special Cases 15 2.80 .68
Re:Icon 35 2.71 .68
Redesign Your Hub 28 2.54 .83
total 302 3.19 .78
Table 24: Scores on scale 3: Meaningful connections
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evaluation, the students’ evaluations enable me to answer the research questions
that are related to the assessment phase of this design-based study.
This analysis will be presented in the next section.
Assessment phase: conclusions
The analysis of the different data I collected enables me to answer the
second research question of this chapter: what is the impact of the teacherdesigned
lessons on local school practice and which learning effects do teachers
and their students perceive? I will structure the discussion of these results
based on Nieveen’s (2009) third and fourth criterion for high quality interventions:
practicality and effectiveness. On the basis of the results of chapter
8, I concluded that the courses teachers designed met Nieveens’ first two
criteria for educational interventions: relevance and consistency. The evaluation
of the implementation process enables me to discuss the courses’ practicality
and effectiveness. Nieveen (2009) considers a learning arrangement
practical when the intervention is usable in the intended setting; it is effective
when it produces the desired outcomes.
Regarding the practicality or usability of the courses, I can conclude
that all of the teachers were able to implement courses that are both practical
and innovative. Their practicality is demonstrated by the fact that the
courses fitted in existing educational contexts and curricula at the level of
secondary and higher education. The courses’ practicality does not imply
that they were identical to regular courses. Most of the participating teachers
emphasized the innovative character of their intervention, both with respect
to its subject matter and its pedagogy. This is supported by the outcomes of
the student evaluations: a majority of the students perceived their course as
different to regular art courses. Most of these students found that the courses
applied a different pedagogical approach or offered them more freedom
than usual. Other students experienced that the courses used different techniques
or subject matter than usual, or that they learned more outside the
school context or collaborated more or than in previous art courses.
The data also demonstrate the effectiveness of the interventions.
A majority of participating teachers reported that they were satisfied with
the learning modes of the students during the course and the forthcoming
learning results. They confirm that their students achieved most of the
learning goals and were able to realize the final products that teachers anticipated.
The results of the students’ learner reports indicate that the courses
generated learning across all knowledge domains: cognitive, technical,
interpersonal and affective. A remarkable result was that nearly half of the
student’s learning experiences were related to the cognitive knowledge
domain. These learning outcomes verify that art education can be more
than ‘just a break between serious school subjects’, and that the popular
characterization of art education as a non-cognitive subject is inadequate.
Another result was that data retrieved from the closed learner reports suggest
a relationship between idea formation, ‘learning from others’ and the
study of popular culture, professional art and societal issues. This correlation
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indicates that the study of art and art related sources and contexts supports
the students’ ability to develop different ideas during artistic processes.
Students may regard the designers, artists and other experts they met or
studied during the course as meaningful resources with regard to their own
creative process.
The data that were retrieved during the assessment phase provided
information about the practicality and affectivity of the courses, but gave
me also a compelling insight into how the design principles of authentic art
education work in practice. These data will be triangulated and discussed
in the final chapter of this study: the reflection phase. In this phase, I will
analyze the ‘behavior’ of the design principles of authentic art education in
realistic educational contexts, which assists the revision of the educational
model and contributes to the discussion of the local and theoretical implications
of this study.
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How Contemporary Visual Practises Inspire Authentic Art Education
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Conclusions
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Reflection phase
Contemporary developments in youth culture and professional art are usually
not immediately reflected in art education. Today’s art educators are
faced with the reality that both the professional visual arts and the visual
interests of their students are rapidly expanding and changing. Processes
of globalization and digitalization have accelerated the availability and
turnover of visual culture; audiovisual techniques are no longer the exclusive
domain of specialists; worldwide networks offer new possibilities for
joint creative production, exchange and learning; and artists blend multiple
social contexts and artistic fields in the same practice. The actualization
of art curricula is complicated because current educational policies send
out a paradoxical message to art educators: the economic justification of
public schooling has weakened the public support for art and art education,
whereas creativity and innovation are designated as the key competences
for future citizens.
I started my PhD because I considered authentic art education
(Haanstra, 2001) a significant social-constructivist pedagogical approach
that offers art educators guidelines for the actualization and revaluation
of their practice. Authentic art education advocates collaborative forms of
learning in complex task situations, and the establishment of meaningful
connections between visual education inside school and developments in
the artistic worlds beyond formal learning institutes. Because authentic
art education approaches the subject matter and pedagogy of art education
as fundamentally dynamic, it supports the innovation of the art curriculum
from the bottom up. It challenges art educators to engage in a
continuous process of exploring and redefining their curriculum in the
light of contemporary visual production, making them less ‘school-like’
and more lifelike.
Remixing the Art Curriculum is based on the premise that art has an
intrinsic social value and that the relevancy of art education increases when
it addresses both the emergent needs and interests of the student and contemporary
developments in the professional art domain. I found that the
original characteristics of authentic art education would gain relevance
when they were compared and aligned with the developments in contemporary
visual practice and converted to a more practical design model for
art educators. I argued that a contemporary model for authentic art education
can reinforce the role of art teachers as reflective practitioners; educators
who perceive their practice as a creative endeavor that requires a
continuous (re)consideration of both subject matter and pedagogy. The
central object of my research was the development of a ‘remixed’ educational
design-model that aligns the original ideas of authentic art education
with the characteristics of contemporary visual production. As I
wanted to explore the actualization of authentic art education both from a
theoretical and a practical perspective, I used a design-based methodology
that con sisted of different research and design phases in which informal
visual producers, professional artists, teachers and students participated.
The design-based approach of this PhD enabled me to derive educational
Conclusions and Discussion
275

Remixing the Art Curriculum
theories from artistic practice and to test and explore theoretical ideas in
the local practices of art educators.
In this last chapter I will present an overview of the outcomes of
the various subsidiary research questions that were examined in the course
of the research project. This will lead to a synthesis and discussion of the
overall research question, which I formulated as: What are the main design
principles of a model for authentic art education that can be derived from the
practices of contemporary informal and professional visual producers, and what
are its implications in educational practices and for curriculum theory? To
answer the central research question I will revisit and discuss the model of
authentic art education I introduced and tested during the research process
and its underlying design principles. Both the local and theoretical impact
of my study will be taken into account in my conclusions and reflections.
Results
To organize my study I used a four-phased structure for design-based
research (figure 30). In most of the four phases, multiple research instruments
were applied including literature reviews, individual and group interviews
and learner reports. This section will present the results of these studies in
the different research phases, which provide the answers to the subsidiary
research questions.
Identification
The goal of this phase was to place the problems that my dissertation aims
to address in a theoretical and historical context and to formulate the main
and subsidiary research questions. I identified the roots and the current
state of authentic art education by discussing the ideas of scholars like
Efland (1976), Anderson and Milbrandt (1998) and Haanstra (2001, 2011).
I concluded that authentic art education is rooted in social-constructivist
ideas on learning and is strongly opposed to the so-called ‘school art style’,
which entails a pedagogy that is detached from both the developments in
Identification
phase
Investigation
phase
Prototyping &
Assessment
phase
Reflection
phase
Backgrounds
and
characteristics
of authentic
art education
Investigation of
contemporary
informal and
professional art
practices
Tentative model
for authentic
art education
Tentative
design
principles
Teachers
design and
implement an
intervention,
based on the
model
Final model
for authentic
art education
Design
principles
and theoretical
implications
Figure 30: Main research phases of Remixing the Art Curriculum
276
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Reflection phase
the professional arts and the student’s self-initiated art. I argued that the
four characteristics or design principles for authentic art education that
were formulated by Haanstra (2001) had been applied and discussed in different
contexts, but were not revised in the light of contemporary informal
and professional visual production. Another problem I identified was that
authentic art education was still a rather theoretical concept because it had
not been operationalized into a practical educational design model for art
educators.
Based on this problem analysis, I formulated three aims for my
study. The first aim was to empirically explore the original design principles
of authentic art education among contemporary visual producers, in both
the informal and professional domain. The second aim was to use the characteristics
of contemporary visual production to update Haanstra’s original
design principles of authentic art education and convert them into an educational
model. The third aim was to investigate the impact of my model in
educational practice through a group of teachers who would use it as a tool
to design and implement new courses. The evaluation of the teachers’ educational
design process and the experiences and learning effects that teachers
and students reported after the implementation of the courses would
inform both the impact of the model in practice and allow generalizations
to broader contexts in which the revised design principles of authentic art
education can be applied.
Because these three aims involved the systematic study of educational
interventions in order to solve a complex educational problem and to
gain insight in key design principles of authentic art education, I argued
that a design-based research methodology was most appropriate for this dissertation.
Design based-research is both utility and theory oriented, involves
the collaboration of practitioners and is operated through cycles of analysis,
(re)design, implementation and evaluation. As complex design-based
research projects are considered to be too time-consuming for a dissertation
(Herrington et al., 2007), I limited its cyclic character. The teacher-designed
courses were developed via collaborative research cycles and they were
tested once with students.
Investigation
During the investigation phase, I examined the practices of contemporary
informal and professional visual producers, which were selected as relevant
contexts to inform a new model for authentic art education. Authentic art
education is aimed at the creation of lifelike learning environments by
breaking the boundaries between school and real world contexts. It seeks to
establish meaningful relationships between both the professional art discipline
and the student’s everyday artistic practice. To find new reference
points for the content and didactics of authentic art education, I decided to
explore two main ‘worlds’ that inform authentic art education quite literally:
the characteristics of ‘the student’s everyday art practice’ were explored by
studying participants in informal visual networks; the features of ‘the
Conclusions and Discussion
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
professional art discipline’ were investigated by studying the practices of
contemporary artists and art collectives. To analyze these practices, I
reviewed the situative perspective within learning psychology (Bereiter &
Scardamalia, 1997; A. L. Brown et al., 1983; Engeström, 1999; Lave & Wenger,
1991) and applied Wenger’s (2006a) model of communities of practice to
classify and describe the characteristics of contemporary visual producers
that were observed.
The literature and empirical study as described in chapter 2 and 3
answered research question 1: How does artistic development and learning take
place among young people in informal visual networks, and what are their sources
of inspiration? I found that contemporary informal visual producers develop
specific forms of expertise inspired by affinity spaces within popular culture
with complex rules, languages and values. Participants learn by forming ad
hoc networks with great variety among members with regard to their population,
motivation, ambition and artistic levels. Community members
encourage others to create and share work, during which they often apply
forms of informal mentorship. This entails that such on or offline communities
are able to function as learning networks without assigning formal roles
to members like teachers or apprentices. Their practice and artistic output
may seem rule-based for non-members, but group conventions often facilitate
creative and reflective productions that continuously redefine that
same practice. The short-term, local artifacts that members produce can
be regarded as contributions to a much larger, globally shared object or
domain that develops over a longer time. A holistic approach toward visual
production enables members to produce experimental and interdisciplinary
visual and non-visual forms, which often develop over time through
a longitudinal commitment to their affinity space. Play, simulation, performance,
copying, sampling and remixing are important methods in informal
visual networks.
The literature and empirical study of socially engaged artists, which
I presented in chapter 4 and 5, answered research question 2: How does artistic
development and learning take place among contemporary artists and what
are their sources of inspiration? I found that contemporary socially engaged
artists are largely inspired by existing human conditions, at both a local and
a global level. Their practice is conceptually rooted in art, but located in
local and global cultural contexts associated with activism and policy formation.
Practitioners are professionally trained artists who value competences
like sensibility, persistence, social and organizing skills over technical skills.
Contrary to the traditional image of the artist as a ‘lone genius’, the artists
studied participate in interactive and collaborative art networks consisting
of peers, professionals from other domains and members of the audience.
I could distinguish three forms of collaboration used by artists: as a production
resource, a strategic means and/or as an artistic theme. An artist’s
collaborative network also bears the characteristics of a learning community
in which critical exchange and joint creation are the most important
forms of information sharing and peer learning. The practices of
278
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Reflection phase
these artists can be typified as both interdisciplinary and process-based:
practitioners define themselves as artists but they operate as hybrid cultural
producers in different social, autonomous and applied contexts. The artworks
they produce can be typified as ‘inter-mediate’; artists use different,
interconnected forms and techniques that function as signifiers of artistic
and social processes.
In my view, the characteristics of informal and professional visual
producers that I defined throughout chapter 2-5 provided me with cutting
edge knowledge of today’s visual practice. The characteristics shed light
on the sources of inspiration, the modes of learning and the production
methods of contemporary visual producers. In order to establish a connection
between the field of visual production and educational practice, the
characteristics I defined were compared and aligned with the existing
design principles for authentic art education in the next stage of my
research project.
Chapter 6 described the last stage of the investigation phase. Here,
I synthesized the results of former chapters to design an updated model for
authentic art education, answering research question 3: How can the characteristics
of contemporary informal and professional communities of practice
inform a pedagogical model for contemporary authentic art education? Based on
a comparison between the characteristics of informal and professional visual
networks I determined that visual producers in two apparently opposite
artistic fields share a substantial amount of characteristics with each other,
both with regard to what is learned and how learning takes place.
Contemporary visual producers operate in distinctive domains and have
different goals, but there are many resemblances in relation to how they
find their inspiration, how they develop expertise, how they apply collaborative
methods for learning and the methods they use for artistic production.
The integrated characteristics of informal and professional visual producers
informed the original design principles for authentic art education, which
I updated, supplemented and rearranged into a visual model (figure 31).
A major adaptation was the introduction of an additional design principle
and learning domain. Haanstra’s original description of authentic art education
merely emphasized connections between two domains: the world of
the student and the professional art world. As my studies indicated that contemporary
visual production is situated in and inspired by broad societal
contexts, I added ‘local and global contexts’ as a third domain. This addition
permits the contextualization of art and popular culture in associated societal
fields; acknowledges non-art knowledge and skills as related to art education;
and emphasizes the operationalization of authentic art education as
a discursive, reflective and thematic curriculum.
Prototyping and assessment
The phase of prototyping and assessment was discussed in chapters 7-9 and
presented how the updated design principles of authentic art education
were tested among teachers and students in what educational researcher
Conclusions and Discussion
279

Remixing the Art Curriculum
Ann Brown called “the blooming, buzzing confusion of inner-city classrooms”
(1992, p. 141). The prototyping phase entailed that a group of art
teachers used the model for authentic art education to design an intervention
in the form of an art course for their local art curriculum.
I implemented a six day summer school as a means to select teachers as
research participants and to support and observe them during their educational
design process. Throughout the prototyping phase participants
received coaching and feedback on their intermediate course plans from
peers, coaches and experts. During the assessment phase, teachers implemented
their self-designed courses in their local practices. The design
Subject matter:
affinnity
spaces in
popular
culture
professional
art
practice
a: Learning is aimed
towards the culture
of the student
Meaningful connections
between professional
art, popular culture and
societal issues
b: Learning tasks
are derived from
activities performed
by art professionals
local and
global issues
c: Learning is situated in
broad societal contexts
Pedagogy:
d: Knowledge is constructed in complete
and complex task situations
– The assignments give scope for
students’ initiative, interests and
opinions
– Interdisciplinary production and
longitudinal artistic research are
stimulated
– The mastery of analogue & digital
techniques is instrumental, rather
than a goal in itself
e: The class operates as a learning
community in which various forms of
expertise are shared
– Collaborative production and (online)
interaction with people outside the
classroom are encour aged
– Copying, sampling and remixing are
seen as part of artistic processes
– Student consultation, presentations
and (peer) evaluations are regular
features of the learning process
Figure 31: Tentative model for authentic art education, as applied during the prototyping and assessment phase
280
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Reflection phase
process, impact and learning results of this intervention were evaluated
by the teachers involved and the students that took part in the courses.
Nieveen’s (2009) criteria for high quality interventions helped me to discuss
the interventions as regards their relevance, consistency, practicality and
effectiveness.
The data I collected during and after the prototyping phase via
observations, interviews and intermediate course plans answered research
question 4: How do art teachers translate the revised design principles of
authentic art education to lessons and how do they perceive this design process?
I concluded that teachers were able to apply the guidelines of the model of
authentic art education to courses that meet the criteria for high quality
with regard to their relevance and their consistency. The participating teachers
reported that the educational design tool challenged them to adopt a
more creative, holistic, systematic and collaborative approach toward
educational design: it enabled them to select relevant subject matter and
learning themes on the cutting edge of popular culture, contemporary art
and societal issues; it helped them to focus on broad student competencies
and final learning outcomes; and it offered them a structure for collective
educational design.
The most important evaluation instruments I used during the
assessment phase of my study were interviews with 20 teachers who
designed and implemented an art course at fifteen different schools as well
as learner reports that were filled out by 302 students who attended the
courses. The analysis of these data, supported by written course plans and
student work provided the answers to research question 5: What is the
impact of the teacher-designed lessons in school practice and which learning
effects do teachers and their students perceive? The evaluation data indicated
that the teacher-designed courses were indeed practical, innovative and
effective. They could be implemented in regular educational contexts with
existing curricula. Their innovative character was most significantly demonstrated
by the outcomes of the learner reports. A majority of the participating
students perceived their course as dissimilar to other art courses in
their curriculum. The arguments with the highest frequencies were that
the courses applied a different pedagogical approach (23.5%); had offered
students more individual freedom (21.4%); presented other techniques
(14.9%); or that the course involved more learning outside school (8.3%)
and collaboration (7.8%). In relation to these last aspects, teachers acknowledged
that learning in real live settings or interaction with outsiders had a
positive effect on the students’ motivation and their personal responsibility
for learning.
Although the desired learning results were not always fully realized,
most teachers emphasized the effectiveness of their courses with
regard to the learning outcomes they produced. The students’ learner
reports indicated that the courses generated learning effects across all of the
different knowledge domains: cognitive, technical, interpersonal and affective.
The most substantial result was that nearly half of students’ learning
Conclusions and Discussion
281

Remixing the Art Curriculum
experiences were related to the cognitive knowledge domain. A surprising
result was that the student responses indicated a positive correlation
between idea formation; learning from others; and the study of popular culture,
professional art and societal issues. My interpretation of this outcome
is that the study of art, popular culture and societal contexts as interrelated
domains supports the students’ creative process.
The data yielded during the prototyping and assessment phase provided
convincing evidence for the efficacy of the model for authentic art
education in relation to the subject matter, the pedagogy and the outcomes
of educational interventions. The model fostered the role of teachers as educational
designers by stimulating a creative, holistic, systematic and collaborative
approach toward educational design. The teacher-designed courses
reflected the main design principles that constitute the model, which were
also perceived as coherent constructs by the students who took the courses.
The courses enabled students to study themes, artifacts and methods
related to the domains of popular culture, conceptual art and society.
Most teachers reported positive experiences with the contemporary art
forms they discussed. Students sometimes perceived contemporary art as
strange and difficult, sometimes as surprisingly accessible, but teachers
were generally able to engage them in processes that involved the analysis
and discussion of contemporary artworks. Most courses presented art and
art education as a broad societal domain, which expanded the possibilities
for critical thinking and creative forms of social resistance. Societal themes
intensified cognitive learning aspects and made them generally more accessible
for students who are less involved in the arts. Teachers reported that
popular culture has a capacity to broaden the definition of art because it
enables students to establish connections between familiar and less familiar
forms of art. They experienced popular culture as a shared domain that
allows both students and teachers to operate as experts in class. The data
illustrated that students cannot be regarded as sole authorities in the popular
domain: although students are quite active in the digital domain, they
are not always familiar with the issues and audiovisual techniques that
featured in the courses.
Most courses were able to realize complex task situations which
demanded that students integrate different forms of knowledge and skills,
including planning, creative research and decision-making. They required
students to take the initiative and challenged them to pursue their personal
fascinations and opinions to complete the task. Teachers highlighted the
prominent role of artistic research processes, even when a course was executed
in a school with a traditional timetable. The data from the open learner
reports confirm the teacher’s perceptions because most of the student’s
learning statements were related to creativity and artistic research (12.8%).
The courses reflected the interdisciplinary and conceptual approaches that
are customary in contemporary visual production: they often did not prescribe
a single visual technique, but required students to experiment and
select the materials and techniques that expressed their ideas best.
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Reflection phase
It is notable that the majority of the courses stimulated students to use
audiovisual and digital techniques, which are still not common in general
art education.
Most courses aimed to establish learning communities by stimulating
(online) interaction within the class community, acknowledging the
student’s expertise and the promotion of collaborative production methods
like teamwork, sampling and remixing. As individual production processes
are often considered to be ‘typical’ for art education, it is notable that most
of the course assignments required students to work in small teams. The
data indicated that collaboration between students in art subjects is a more
regular feature at the secondary level than at the level of higher education.
Several courses experimented with features like research and presentations
outside school, online interaction, external experts, or extensive peer evaluations,
although these aspects were not always implemented successfully or
sometimes even completely discarded as the course proceeded.
As the prototyping and assessment phase reflected and confirmed
the main design principles of authentic art education, major revisions to
the tentative model were not implied. However, the data did present supplementary
aspects, which I will discuss on the basis of the final model of
authentic art education.
Reflection and implications
In this final section of my dissertation I will discuss the outcomes and generalizability
of my design-based research project, at both local and broader
levels. McKenney et al. (2006) have argued that educational design research
yields three key outputs: curricular products or programs, design principles
or intervention theory; and the professional development of participants
involved in the study. The fifteen courses that teachers designed and implemented
during my research project were presented and discussed in the
case sheet section and chapter 9. In the next section, I will present a slightly
revised version of the model of authentic art education, followed by a discussion
of the implications of my study with regard to educational theory
and practice. The last section will discuss how my and similar design-based
research studies can contribute to the professional development of art
teachers. These reflections provide the answers to the main research question
of Remixing the Art Curriculum: What are the main design principles of a
model for authentic art education that can be derived from the practices of contemporary
informal and professional visual producers, and what are its implications
in educational practices and for curriculum theory?
Finalized model and design principles for authentic art education
In the course of this dissertation I updated and redesigned the original
design principles of authentic art education (Haanstra, 2001) on the basis
of characteristics that I identified in the practices of contemporary informal
and professional visual producers. The data that I collected during the
phases in which these principles were tested in varied practices indicate
Conclusions and Discussion
283

Remixing the Art Curriculum
that the heuristic guidelines that constitute the model for authentic art
education were robust. As its main design principles were already established
and quite intensively discussed in former chapters, I will limit the
description of the final model to the aspects that were altered or added.
I interpreted two outcomes of the prototyping and assessment
phase as complementary to the model. The design process of the teachers
demonstrated that context-rich artworks and images have a large capacity
to function as responsive environment organizers (Earl, 1987), which help
designers to envisage the entire learning-teaching arrangement and that
may function as stimuli and reference points for students. This signifies
that the selection of subject matter and pedagogical design are creative
and reciprocal processes, which influence each other constantly. In the final
model (figure 32), the strict division between pedagogy and subject matter disappears,
which implies that all five design principles are related to what and
how students learn in the context of authentic art education. The three
guidelines associated with the domains of professional art, popular culture
and societal issues are presented as one ‘super’ design principle: learning
tasks are aimed toward the culture of the student, derived from professional art
and situated in broad societal contexts. This design principle explains how the
three domains in the Venn diagram interact pedagogically: art educators are
advised to seek a balance between the prior knowledge and cultural interests
of the student; learning activities as performed by art professionals; and
the local and global issues associated with artistic production. This design
principle is further operationalized with three guiding characteristics concerning
both subject matter and pedagogy. The guideline context-rich visual
and art sources operate as stimuli for the formation of learning and teaching
arrangements is a new addition that expresses the relation between artistic
resources and responsive environment organizers that I discussed
previously.
My second addition to the model is related to art education as a
pedagogical space for social critique and intervention. The evaluation of the
implemented courses revealed that teachers were able to successfully implement
forms of ‘creative resistance’ (Darts, 2004) in regular educational
contexts, which enabled students to discuss social issues and existing power
relations via the methods of contemporary artists. This outcome is relevant
because it underlines that a connection between societal issues and critical
art practice is feasible in curricula of regular schools and produces opportunities
for art-specific forms of discussion and reflection. Additionally, as
creative resistance is associated with real life issues and contexts, this
reinforces the situated aspect of authentic art education in the model.
I formulated the additional guideline as: the learning environment enables
critical and artistic interaction with real life contexts.
The finalized version of the model in figure 32 presents the design
principles and guidelines for authentic art education in a more coherent
form than previous versions. The Venn diagram visualizes the relationships
between the main design principles holistically, without discriminating
284
Chapter 10

Reflection phase
a1: Learning is aimed
towards the culture
of the student
affinity
spaces within
popular
culture
b: Knowledge is
constructed in complex
task situations
c: The class operates as
a learning community in
which various forms of
expertise are shared
professional
art practices
a2: Learning tasks
are derived from
activities performed
by art professionals
local and
global issues
a3: Learning is
situated in broad
societal contexts
Main design
principles
Guiding
characteristics
a: Learning tasks are
aimed toward the
culture of the student,
derived from
professional art and
situated in broad
societal contexts
Subject matter is based
on meaningful connections
between professional
art, popular culture
and societal issues
Context-rich visual and
art sources operate as
stimuli for the formation
of learning and teaching
arrangements
The learning environment
enables critical and
artistic interaction with
real life contexts
b: Knowledge is
constructed in
complex task
situations
The assignments
give scope for
students’
initiative, interests
and opinions
Interdisciplinary
production and
longitudinal
artistic research
are stimulated
The mastery of
analogue & digital
techniques is
instrumental,
rather than a goal
in itself
c: The class operates as a
learning community in
which various forms of
expertise are shared
Collaborative production and
(online) interaction with people
outside the classroom are
encouraged
Copying, sampling and
remixing are seen as part of
artistic processes
Student consultation,
presentations and (peer)
evaluations are regular features
of the learning process
Figure 32: Finalized model for authentic art education
Conclusions and Discussion
285

Remixing the Art Curriculum
between aspects related to subject matter and pedagogy. The integration of
the design principles related to popular culture, professional art and societal
issues assists the formulation of supporting characteristics associated
with all three domains. These characteristics add substantial aspects to the
educational design processes and the content and pedagogy of authentic
art education.
Implications
This section discusses the outcomes of Remixing the Art Curriculum in relation
to contemporary discourses in learning theory and the field of art education.
As my results are produced in the context of design-based research
with relatively small sample sizes, many uncontrolled variables and highly
motivated educational designers, they require cautious interpretation. I will
therefore not discuss these outcomes as ‘strong empirical evidence’ for certain
effects, but rather as context-rich, pioneering findings that inform
developments and debates in contemporary art education.
Implications: methodology
In art education, like in many other educational fields, theorists and practitioners
are living in the same house but rarely encounter each other. Mutual
interaction between art education theory and practice is fairly limited, due
to reasons like different concerns and the lack of a shared language (Pariser,
2014; Walker, 2014). The pragmatic perspective from which my study and
several other design-based studies departs aims to join theoretical advancement
with educational practice through a research process in which theorists
and practitioners inform each other reciprocally. My study sheds light
on how design-based research can be operationalized in the context of art
education and how it produces both theory and its application in practice.
Because my study combines extensive literature with empirical research and
uses a limited set of research instruments, I was able to successfully contest
the ‘under-conceptualized and over-methodologized’ reputation of designbased
research. However, I experienced my combined role as designer and
researcher as quite complicated. On the one hand a role as designer/
researcher is attractive because it adds creative aspects to a systematic
research practice. This is methodologically valuable as it enables researchers
to reconsider and innovate their practice, while it fits the pragmatic paradigm
supporting design-based research. Nonetheless, I also realized that my
position is somewhat ‘suspicious’ in relation to the evaluation and outcomes
of my study. I tried to reduce evaluator effects and observer bias
methodologically whenever feasible, but I found it nearly impossible to
completely separate the roles of designer, facilitator, observer and evaluator.
The complicated multiple role of the researcher is generally accepted in the
context of design-based research, but I think that large-scale design-based
research projects gain academic rigor when executed by a small research
team, rather than by a single researcher. A team of researchers can divide
and alternate the roles of designers and evaluators among its members and
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Reflection phase
offers opportunities for investigator triangulation. Additionally, I experienced
that Hawthorne effects among the participating teachers are inevitable
to some extent. Hawthorne effects refer to the tendency of people to perform
better when they are being observed or when they subscribe to the
researcher’s expectations (McCambridge, Witton, & Elbourne, 2014). Most
teachers that are willing to implement a self-designed course in the context
of a research project are highly motivated to turn that endeavor into a success.
I think that such Hawthorne effects are unavoidable in the context of
design-based research because teachers that do not commit to some extent
to the underlying rationale of the research project will probably not participate
at all.
Implications: the art curriculum
A contemporary art curriculum
Most teachers that participated in this research project work in the
Netherlands but the challenges they face with regard to a contemporary art
curriculum are largely generalizable to broader international contexts. The
data retrieved from the practices of informal and professional visual producers
in my research project illustrate that the field in which art educators
operate is dynamic, hybrid and increasingly globalized. They shed light on
what Steers has called ‘the ever expanding art curriculum’ (Steers, 2007): a
vibrant, intercultural and interdisciplinary visual practice that can hardly
be tied to a hegemonic canon or a fixed a set of techniques in a curriculum.
Contemporary visual production is much less steered by genre, form or
technique, as by the fascinations, problems and ideas that practitioners
explore. The mastery of artistic techniques is not seen as conditional to
artistic production but as a parallel process that is defined by the engagement
in specific issues and the desire to produce meaningful work. The data I
retrieved from spontaneous art producers indicate that visual production
around self-chosen subjects and methods stimulates the development of
artistic skills. The professional art practices I investigated are largely
inspired by the need to explore local and global issues in the context of art.
These and other characteristics of contemporary visual production that
I defined collide with the dominant tradition in ‘school art’ curricula.
Standardized art curricula that continue to focus on canonized artworks,
formal aesthetics and the development of traditional crafts are anachronistic
in two different ways: they offer few opportunities for students to experience
art as something of relevance in relation to their lives and they do not
introduce them to the habits and modes of present-day art production.
Connecting youth culture and professional art
An expanding and ‘liquidizing’ (Bauman, 2011) visual field requires art
educators who are able to make meaningful connections between emergent
needs and interests of the students and developments in the professional
field. I found that young people explore specific affinity spaces
Conclusions and Discussion
287

Remixing the Art Curriculum
within popular culture through their visual production, but that their
expertise and skills hardly cross over to the domain of professional and
conceptual art.
In that sense, professional contemporary artworks are educationally significant
because they have a capacity to connect societal developments, popular
culture and art, as they discuss cultural issues including our visual culture.
The relevance of a contemporary art curriculum is that it can enable
students to interconnect familiar cultural modes with more distant
forms of art and visual production. The pedagogical approach to realize this
is, in part, embodied by the contemporary creative practices outside schools.
The school’s typical focus on originality and individual imagination as the
sole path to creativity were barely reflected by the representatives of the
artistic communities in my study. Although informal and professional visual
producers are active in different domains, they both operate in collaborative
networks and regard their interactions with others as important resources
for artistic production and learning. Contemporary art practice is more
about social connection and involvement than about individualization and
solitary genius. A greater emphasis on the social aspects of art production in
educational contexts supports the establishment of the art curriculum as a
learning community in which art, popular culture and societal issues are
explored and discussed among teachers and students.
A thematic, discursive and reflective art curriculum
A significant outcome of my PhD research shows how art courses based on
authentic education are able to address a broad array of skills, including critical
and creative thinking, technical, behavioral and social skills. Moreover,
the data indicate that teachers and students were able to develop these skills
through disciplined inquiry, which entails that they were developed through
art-specific methodologies in the context of contemporary social discourses
in the arts and popular culture. This outcome is interesting in the light of
present discussions about the impact and role of art education in knowledge-based
and globalized economies. Although policy makers tend to draw
colorful pictures of how arts education can strengthen capacities needed
for social and economic innovation (Dean et al., 2010; Dutch Ministry of
Education Culture and Science, 2013; Unesco, 2010), the evidence of the
impact of the arts on non-art skills is relatively scarce (Winner et al., 2013).
However, the results in my thesis reveal that a broad cultural orientation
toward art can strengthen the intrinsic aspects and innovation of art education
itself. The inclusion of global and local issues in the curriculum makes
art education more accessible for students, and more importantly, it aligns
the art curriculum with contemporary visual practice. I subscribe to the
notion that the main justification for art education lies in domain-specific
skills, but this does not entail that art and visual production should be
deprived of relevant subject matter and methods related to non-art subjects.
My study shows that the practices of informal and professional visual producers
are situated in broad social contexts, which are often lacking in
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traditional art education. It illustrates that authentic art education resides in
a thematic, discursive and reflective curriculum, which requires students to
alternate visual production with personal and theoretical reflection on art in
expansive socio-cultural contexts.
Authentic art education stimulates innovation
The paramount implication of Remixing the Art Curriculum is that it exemplifies
how the revised design principles of authentic art education can stimulate
the design and implementation of innovative learning/teaching
arrangements that reflect and discuss contemporary (visual) culture and
challenge students to think and act more like professional creative producers.
The courses developed during my study reflect the characteristics of
contemporary creative practice: they discuss actual issues via the work of
living artists; technique and form are sub servient to the expression of personal
and societal engagement; they encourage interdisciplinary artistic
research; and they present digital techniques, sampling and remixing as
artistic methods. Additionally, the courses present visual artistic production
as a collaborative, interactive and communicative endeavor, rather than as
an individualistic enterprise. The courses in my study were underpinned
with the model of authentic art education, but they also reflect contemporary
debates in art education that advocate the inclusion of popular visual
and digital culture in the art curriculum (Billmayer, 2014; Kafai & Peppler,
2011; Wilson, 2011); the study and production of contemporary art in regular
school contexts (Adams, 2012; Groenendijk et al., 2012; Gude, 2013); and art
education as a space for student participation in cultural conversations
related to identity, ethics, politics and power (Ciampaglia, 2014; Tavin, 2010).
My thesis should therefore be regarded as an anthology of efforts to modernize
the art curriculum, to offer students authentic learning experiences
and to contest the argument that art teachers are “typically stuck in the
past” (Wilson, 2003, p. 216).
Implications: educational policy
The art teacher as an educational designer
Authentic art education is reinforced by a curriculum that is designed by
teachers who are able to incorporate topical issues derived from actual
practices related to informal and professional art production. The outcomes
of my study highlight that students, although they are far from
blank pages regarding visual culture, still need art teachers who can introduce
them to practices, themes, and techniques they are not familiar with.
In my view, a topic-centered, thematic educational design approach is the
answer to ongoing questions about the significance of art curricula in the
context of the professional visual arts and that are relevant and meaningful
for the participating students. A curriculum based on an (historical)
art canon or lists of required media and techniques is inherently problematic
because it suggests a comprehensiveness that is at odds with the
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expanding visual domain outside school and the scarce amount of time
available in school.
One of the aspects that struck me most during my research project
is that curriculum design is a rather implicit aspect in the daily practice of
art educators. Educational design is often a hidden activity, buried beneath
the overwhelming daily reality of class management, lesson preparations
and examinations. I think that schools have a tendency to focus on pedagogical
professionalization and often consider the teacher’s artistic content
knowledge as a static given. In a dynamic visual world, subject-based professional
development is equally important for art teachers as their pedagogical
professionalization. The teacher-designed courses in this research
project illustrate that thematically grouped artworks and visual examples
evoke learning and teaching arrangements, rather than just illustrate them.
Artistic works embody contexts, ideas, theories, processes and opinions
that trigger the designers’ creativity to articulate educational themes, contents
and proceedings. The participating teachers who actively followed or
produced contemporary art were most able to construct meaningful learning
arrangements based on rich resources. This demonstrates that the content
and pedagogy of art education are inseparable, which requires that
educational designers should possess both expertise about contemporary
visual practice and pedagogical knowledge. I believe, therefore, that an outcome-based
approach based on competencies to be acquired only leads to
high quality art education when schools acknowledge that the design of
contemporary art curricula requires time and space for experts in education
and art.
In accordance with Eisner (1979), I regard the design and teaching
of authentic art education as an artistic endeavor in itself, because it is largely
dependent on the connoisseurship, imagination and personal beliefs of
the teacher. Contrary to Eisner, I consider curriculum design also as a collaborative
artistic activity, in line with the communities of practice in the contemporary
visual arts I studied. My research demonstrates that curriculum
design is reinforced when it is operationalized collectively. Groups of educational
designers can complement each other’s expertise and they can
advance the consistency of pedagogical interventions, coordinated by
shared design strategies. It is important that design strategies for collective
educational design and their underlying theoretical principles are further
explored by future research because I think that today’s (art) educators
need sound fishing rods, rather than more fish. Such investigations could
answer relevant questions in the line of this dissertation like: what are the
implications of team curriculum design on school practices?; how can
contemporary developments in art and visual culture be aligned with arts’
traditions and histories?; and what are the characteristics of a context-rich,
thematic, research-based art curriculum that stretches over several years?
Another topic that requires further study is the design of authentic assessments.
The results of my research indicate that many teachers struggled to
operationalize the guidelines for authentic assessment in my model.
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Subsequent studies could explicitly investigate the relations between my
educational design model and the latest developments with regard to
authentic assessment in the arts (Broekhuizen & Schönau, 2014; Gulikers,
2011; Kortland & Maarleveld, 2014).
Social-constructivism
The results of my research are also relevant in the light of contemporary
debates about constructivist learning, or ‘new learning’ as it is often phrased
in The Netherlands (Teurlings et al., 2006; Van der Werf, 2005; Volman,
2006). As discussed earlier in my dissertation, constructivist learning theories
are often misconceived as pedagogies that imply that teachers should
merely operate as facilitators for learning, avoiding any form of direct
instruction or didactical intervention (Davis & Sumara, 2002). Another
popular perception is that learning and teaching based on constructivist
principles is only feasible when the entire school organization is involved.
The results of my study confirm that the fact that authentic art education
is rooted in social-constructivism does not imply that it cannot be
implemented in traditional learning contexts. Some of the courses were
hindered by fragmented traditional timetables and students who were
unaccustomed to ill-structured tasks, but generally most participants were
able to implement a course with social-constructivist elements in regular
educational contexts. The study confirms that authentic (art) education is
a flexible, rather than a radical social-constructivist learning concept, which
allows both bottom up and top down approaches in teaching (Roelofs &
Terwel, 1999). It verifies that ‘authenticity’ of authentic art education must
be seen as a continuum, rather than as a set standard (Gulikers, 2011;
Newmann & Wehlage, 1993). The cases in my study illustrate that the main
design principles do not have to be maximized in each learning arrangement,
but can be attuned to the experience and capacities of the student
and to the limitations and possibilities of the local learning environment.
The main criterion is not if a lesson is authentic or not, but to what extent
authenticity can be attained.
Social critique and intervention
An important political implication of Remixing the Art Curriculum is that the
discussion of social subject matter in combination with contemporary artistic
methodologies like remixing, social interventions, culture jamming and
hacktivism (Hearn, Mahncke, & Williams, 2009; Klanten et al., 2011) creates
opportunities for students to criticize and even to playfully disrupt existing
power relationships (Darts, 2004; Duncum, 2011). Several of the teacherdesigned
courses in my study reflect such critical approaches, ranging from
students who comment on cultural stereotypes by remixing music videos to
students who physically intervene in public space. These data confirm that
forms of critical resistance are feasible in ‘ordinary’ school settings and in
my opinion those are the contexts where they are most valuable and needed.
My argument concurs with Biesta (2010), who has argued that the function
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of state funded education is not only to qualify and socialize students, but
that schooling should also provide space for subjectivation, challenging
students to become autonomous and independent thinkers and actors.
The model for authentic art education pursues this goal by challenging
students to engage in studying and producing visual art as a means to
explore ideas, values and opinions. My research emphasizes that forms of
critical art production challenge students to formulate personal opinions
and to adopt the role of a critical, creative producer. John Dewey, whose
theories are regarded as early influences on authentic education, stressed
that a basic aim of public schooling is to initiate students into the practices
of democracy (Schultz, Barcovich, & McSurley, 2010). Dewey’s ideas resonate
in the final statement of a teacher who implemented her course in
Hungary during my research project:
For students to be able to work the way authentic art education
implies, they need to know how to make choices, how to think,
how to be active and how to care for themselves, basically
how to live in a democratic society. So, for me this model is
very attractive and liberal because it assumes that teachers
and students are responsible for their own decisions, which is
not evident everywhere and every time in the world - not even
in Europe.
A time that is marked by visual, global and trans-medial communication
requires art teachers who are able to design learning environments that
enable students to explore and discuss their daily reality. An art educator’s
practice that is construed as inherently creative, interactive and collaborative
has many resemblances with the practices of the socially
engaged artists that were discussed in my study. Huybrechts (2014) has
defined participatory art projects as risky trade-offs between maker and
participants with inherently undefined and uncertain outcomes. Risks
should not be avoided, but are regarded as desirable aspects that contribute
to the complexity, mutual interaction and ‘open ended-ness’ of participatory
projects. My study implies that risky trade-offs are not only an
inherent aspect of contemporary visual production but also of an art curriculum
that aims to be authentic. The orientation towards real world
artistic contexts and learning via open tasks that authentic art education
entails is impossible to realize if educators want to take full control over
the student’s learning process and learning environment. Schools and
teachers who are trying to minimize risk in an art curriculum will probably
end up with typical ‘school art’: student work that is fully disciplined
by the controlling conditions of the school and entirely detached from
artistic practices outside the classroom. The outcomes of my PhD
research have a political significance because they underline that an
authentic contemporary art curriculum thrives in a climate in which
students are supported and allowed to engage in the risks that ensue
from real world interaction, collaboration, creative enquiry, experimentation
and critical thinking.
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Contributions to the professional development of art educators
Being an art teacher myself, I found one of the most attractive aspects of
design-based research that it involves direct interaction between researchers
and practitioners, enabling them to learn from each other. Art teachers
who participated in my summer school and designed and implemented
educational interventions formed the group that was most intensively
engaged in this process. Several of them acknowledged that their participation
had enabled them to update their knowledge and skills with regard to
aspects like recent educational theories and curriculum design, contemporary
developments in art and popular culture, and the implementation of
non-traditional materials and techniques in class. Many participants emphasized
that they would continue to use the model for authentic art education
for design purposes or as a diagnostic tool to evaluate their curriculum.
When I discussed the methodology of this dissertation during a
guest lecture in Amsterdam in 2014, one of my colleagues mentioned that
my research project exemplifies on a large scale how art teachers should
explore related fields in their everyday practices. I agree with that interpretation.
In my view, high quality art education always starts with teachers who
are both involved with the concerns of their students and with the developments
in their professional field. My investigation is rooted in the thought
that a contemporary art curriculum demands that teachers engage in a continuous
process of investigating what the current role of art and visual culture
in a society entails, what students need to learn and how this can be
translated into challenging learning arrangements. In that sense, my study
can be regarded as an academic version of the explorations that art teachers
need to perform in their daily practices: I examined the current state of
affairs in visual production by investigating the communities of practice of
both informal and professional visual producers, and used these outcomes
to update existing ideas with regard to authentic art education. Like a teacher
would, I not only studied these ideas about learning and teaching theoretically,
I also tested them in local educational practices with real life
colleagues and students. Remixing the Art Curriculum is therefore not only
‘food for academics’, but sets an example for teachers who want to align
their curriculum and teaching practice with contemporary developments
in visual production.
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
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Hedendaagse docenten beeldende kunst en vormgeving zien zowel de
actuele kunst als de visuele interesses van hun leerlingen razendsnel
veranderen. Processen als globalisering en digitalisering vergroten de
beschikbaarheid en omzetsnelheid van visuele cultuur; audiovisuele technieken
zijn niet langer het exclusieve domein van specialisten; wereldwijde
netwerken bieden nieuwe mogelijkheden voor collectieve creatieve productie,
uitwisseling en leren; ‘hybride’ kunstenaars mengen verschillende sociale
contexten en artistieke productievormen binnen dezelfde praktijk. Deze
ontwikkelingen vergroten de kloof tussen traditionele kunsteducatie op
school en de ontwikkelingen daarbuiten. De actualisering van het kunstcurriculum
wordt extra bemoeilijkt doordat beleidsmakers een paradoxale
boodschap aan kunstdocenten afgeven: enerzijds heeft de economische
motivering van het belang van funderend onderwijs het maatschappelijke
draagvlak voor kunst en kunsteducatie verkleind, anderzijds worden competenties
als het vermogen tot creativiteit en innovatie juist aangeduid as
sleutelvaardigheden voor de burger van de toekomst.
Remixing the Art Curriculum is een ontwerponderzoek dat uitgaat
van de premisse dat kunst een intrinsieke sociaal-culturele waarde heeft
en dat relevantie van kunsteducatie toeneemt wanneer zij zowel ingaat
op de leerbehoeftes en interesses van de leerling als op hedendaagse
ontwikkelingen in de professionele kunsten. Deze opvatting sluit aan bij
de uitgangs punten van authentieke kunsteducatie, een sociaal-constructivistisch
leerconcept dat streeft naar een dynamisch kunstcurriculum dat
aansluit bij de ontwikkelingen in de wereld buiten de school. Authentieke
kunsteducatie stimuleert vernieuwing van onderaf, omdat het kunstdocenten
uitdaagt om realistische leeromgevingen te ontwerpen waarin zowel de
professionele kunstwereld als de populaire beeldcultuur van de leerlingen
vertegenwoordigd is.
Het centrale onderzoeksobject van mijn ontwerpstudie is de ontwikkeling
van een model dat actuele theoretische richtlijnen biedt voor
het ontwerp en de uitvoering van authentiek beeldend kunstonderwijs.
Om de oorspronkelijke uitgangspunten van authentieke kunsteducatie te
actualiseren en aan te vullen heb ik theoretisch en empirisch onderzoek
verricht naar de twee buitenschoolse ‘werelden’ waar authentieke kunsteducatie
aansluiting bij zoekt: de alledaagse, spontane visuele praktijken
van jongeren en de praktijken van hedendaagse beeldend kunstenaars en
ontwerpers. De kenmerken van deze hedendaagse beeldende praktijken
heb ik als bouwstenen gebruikt voor het ontwerpen van een herzien
model voor actuele kunsteducatie. De volgende fase van het onderzoek
bestond uit het testen en evalueren van het nieuwe model in de onderwijspraktijk.
Een groep docenten ontwikkelde lessenseries gebaseerd op
het model, die vervolgens werden uitgevoerd op 15 verschillende scholen
variërend van VMBO tot HBO. Op basis van observaties en interviews kreeg
ik inzicht in de ervaringen van de docenten met het model, zowel wat
betreft hun educatieve ontwerpproces als de uitvoering van de door hen
ontwikkelde lessen. De leerervaringen van de deelnemende leerlingen en
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studenten bracht ik in kaart door het afnemen van learner reports onder
302 van de participanten.
De resultaten van de studie hebben zowel betrekking op de
theorievorming als op de praktijk van kunsteducatie. Het onderzoek
levert theoretische inzichten op over waarom hedendaagse jongeren en
professionele kunstenaars visuele producties maken en hoe hun leer- en
productieproces eruitziet. Daarnaast bieden de resultaten zicht op de
manier waarop actuele buitenschoolse ontwikkelingen vertaald kunnen
worden naar educatieve ontwerpprincipes en in hoeverre deze principes
‘werken’ in verschillende onderwijspraktijken.
Het ontwerponderzoek is ingedeeld in vier fases: identificatiefase
(H1), researchfase (H2-6), prototype en evaluatiefase (H7-9), en reflectiefase
(H10). Het verloop en de belangrijkste resultaten van elke fase worden
hieronder besproken.
Identificatiefase
In deze fase wordt authentieke kunsteducatie in een theoretisch en
historisch kader geplaatst van waaruit de onderzoeksvragen worden geformuleerd.
De ontstaansgeschiedenis en de huidige staat van authentieke
kunsteducatie worden beschreven aan de hand van de ideeën van Efland
(1976), Anderson en Milbrandt (1998) en Haanstra (2001, 2011). Authentieke
kunsteducatie vindt zijn oorsprong in de sociaal-constructivistische onderwijstheorie
en streeft naar betekenisvolle, realistische leeromgevingen waarin
de grens tussen de schoolwereld en de ‘echte’ wereld doorbroken wordt.
De uitgangspunten van authentieke kunsteducatie worden omschreven aan
de hand van vier karakteristieken: kennis wordt geconstrueerd in complexe
taaksituaties die ruimte bieden voor eigen initiatief; het onderwijs gaat in
op de cultuur van de leerling; leertaken zijn afgeleid van activiteiten die professionals
in de kunsten verrichten; en onderlinge samenwerking en communicatie
spelen een prominente rol bij het leren (Haanstra, 2001, 2011).
Authentieke kunsteducatie zet zich af tegen zogenoemde schoolkunst
(Efland, 1976), een vorm van kunsteducatie die functioneel is binnen scholen,
maar die nauwelijks relatie heeft met ontwikkelingen in de professionele
kunsten en de spontane kunstproductie van leerlingen.
Op basis van de ontwikkeling van authentieke kunsteducatie
constateer ik twee problemen. De vier karakteristieken van authentieke kunsteducatie
die Haanstra in 2001 formuleerde zijn in verschillende contexten
toegepast en onderzocht, maar zijn nooit herzien of herijkt in het licht van
de actuele kunstproductie. Een ander probleem is dat authentieke kunsteducatie
vooral een theoretisch concept blijft omdat haar uitgangspunten
niet vertaald zijn naar een praktisch ontwerpmodel voor kunstdocenten.
Aan de hand van deze probleemanalyse definieer ik drie doelen voor mijn
dissertatie. Het eerste doel is om de uitgangspunten van authentieke
kunsteducatie empirisch te verkennen in de praktijken van hedendaagse
beeldproducenten, zowel in het informele als in het professionele domein.
Het tweede doel is om de karakteristieken van hedendaagse visuele pro-
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ductie te gebruiken om de oorspronkelijke ontwerpprincipes van authentieke
kunsteducatie te actualiseren en van daaruit een model te
ontwikkelen als ontwerptool voor kunstdocenten. Het derde doel betreft
het onderzoeken van de effecten van het door mij ontwikkelde model in
de kunsteducatieve praktijk.
De hoofdvraag van het onderzoek luidt: wat zijn de belangrijkste ontwerpprincipes
voor een model voor authentieke kunsteducatie dat is afgeleid van
de praktijken van hedendaagse informele en professionele visuele producenten,
en welke implicaties heeft het model in de kunsteducatieve praktijk en op het vlak
van curriculumtheorie? Omdat mijn onderzoek ingaat op concrete problemen
in de complexe onderwijspraktijk en daarnaast nieuwe theoretische
inzichten wil verschaffen kies ik voor een ontwerpgerichte onderzoeksbenadering.
Net als andere ontwerpgerichte studies is mijn onderzoek zowel
gericht op praktijkproblemen als op theorievorming, wordt er samengewerkt
met verschillende soorten praktijkbeoefenaars en bestaat het onderzoek
uit cycli waarin het ontwerp wordt geëvalueerd en aangescherpt.
Researchfase
Deze fase onderzoekt de buitenschoolse contexten die relevant zijn voor de
herziening van de ontwerpprincipes van authentieke kunsteducatie. Om
actuele referenties voor de inhoud en didactiek van authentieke beeldende
kunsteducatie te vinden, worden twee buitenschoolse contexten nader verkend:
de ‘beeldcultuur van de leerling’ is onderzocht aan de hand van de
praktijken van jongeren die opereren in informele visuele netwerken; ‘de
activiteiten van kunstprofessionals’ zijn in kaart gebracht aan de hand van
de praktijken van sociaal geëngageerde kunstenaars en collectieven. Om de
theoretische en empirische data te beschrijven en analyseren gebruik ik het
communities of practice model van Wenger (2006a).
Hoofdstuk 2 en 3 beschrijven respectievelijk een literatuurstudie
en een empirisch onderzoek naar de visuele artistieke productie, inspiratiebronnen
en leeractiviteiten van jongeren in het informele domein. Om
de kenmerken van informele visuele kunstproductie op te sporen is het
onderzoek toegespitst op informele visuele netwerken: spontaan gevormde
analoge en digitale visuele productiegroepen die gevormd zijn rond
interessegebieden als fan-art, gaming, manga, cosplay en graffiti. Op basis
van de onderzoeken worden er kenmerken van informele kunstproductie
gedefinieerd. Informele visuele producenten ontwikkelen specifieke expertises
op basis van interessegebieden in de populaire cultuur met complexe
regels, talen en waarden. Deelnemers leren door het vormen van ad-hoc netwerken
van jongeren met verschillende achtergronden, ambities en artistieke
niveaus. Leden van de netwerken helpen elkaar door het samen maken
of uitwisselen van werk en door het geven van feedback. In die zin functioneren
on- en offline communities als onafhankelijke leernetwerken zonder
docenten. Voor buitenstaanders ogen informele visuele praktijken vaak weinig
creatief omdat deelnemers vooral lijken te moeten voldoen aan bepaalde
codes en regels. Informele visuele producenten ervaren deze regels
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echter niet als restrictief, maar als uitgangspunten waarop eindeloos voortgebouwd
en gevarieerd kan worden. Informele producenten maken werk
vanuit een holistische, interdisciplinaire benadering: hun visuele productie
wordt gestuurd door de onderwerpen waarin ze geïnteresseerd zijn, minder
door de voorkeur voor een specifiek materiaal of specifieke techniek.
Informele kunstproductie is sterk productgericht, maar omdat deelnemers
vaak lange tijd trouw blijven aan een bepaald interessedomein kunnen individuele
producties gezien worden als onderdelen van een doorlopend artistiek
proces. Daarbij vormen spel, simulatie, kopiëren, samplen en remixen
belangrijke experimentele productiemethodes.
In hoofdstuk 4 en 5 onderzoek ik het werkveld van professionele
kunstenaars en vormgevers. Omdat het professionele veld zeer breed en
gevarieerd is, heb ik ook hier gekozen voor de selectie van een specifieke
groep kunstenaars. Het onderzoek richt zich specifiek op sociaal geëngageerde
kunstpraktijken, vanuit mijn verwachting dat onder deze kunstenaars
de meest actuele ideeën en methodieken over hedendaagse
kunstproductie te vinden zijn. Op basis van literatuur- en empirisch onderzoek
worden de kenmerken van hedendaagse sociaal geëngageerde kunstpraktijken
gedefinieerd. Het menselijk bestaan vormt de belangrijkste
inspiratiebron van sociaal geëngageerde kunstenaars. Hun praktijken zijn
conceptueel geworteld in de kunst, maar richten zich op lokale en globale
sociale contexten vanuit een activistisch en politiek perspectief. De kunstenaars
hebben een professionele kunstopleiding gevolgd, maar noemen competenties
als gevoeligheid, doorzettingsvermogen, sociale kwaliteiten en
organisatievermogen belangrijkere succesfactoren dan de beheersing van
kunstzinnige technieken. Geheel in tegenspraak met het populaire beeld
van de kunstenaar als lone genius blijken de onderzochte kunstenaars te
opereren in interactieve netwerken waarin wordt samengewerkt met
collega-kunstenaars, met experts van buiten de kunsten en met hun publiek.
De onderzochte kunstenaars gebruiken samenwerking op drie verschillende
manieren: als productiemiddel, als strategisch middel en als artistiek thema.
De netwerken waarin kunstenaars opereren fungeren als leergemeenschappen
waarin kennis gedeeld wordt door het onderling bediscussiëren
en het gezamenlijk produceren van kunst. Hun praktijken kunnen worden
getypeerd als interdisciplinair en procesgericht: kunstenaars zijn actief in
verschillende sociale contexten en maken vaak zowel autonoom als toegepast
beeldend werk. Zij beschouwen hun kunstwerken als representaties
van artistieke en sociale processen, waarbij artistieke vorm en techniek per
project worden bepaald.
In hoofdstuk 6 breng ik de kenmerken van hedendaagse beeldproductie
in verband met de uitgangspunten van authentieke kunsteducatie,
wat leidt tot een actualisering van de designprincipes en tot een nieuw
model voor authentieke beeldende kunsteducatie. Als eerste stap worden
de verzamelde karakteristieken van informele en professionele visuele producenten
uit hoofdstuk 2-5 onderling vergeleken. Daarbij valt op dat visuele
producenten uit ogenschijnlijk tegengestelde domeinen overeenkomsten
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met elkaar vertonen als het gaat om wat deelnemers leren en hoe het leren
verloopt. Informele en professionele beeldmakers werken vaak vanuit
andere interesses en doelen maar vertonen overeenkomsten wat betreft de
manier waarop zij inspiratiebronnen vinden, hoe ze expertise verwerven,
hoe ze collectief leren en de creatieve productiemethodes die ze gebruiken.
Omdat authentieke kunsteducatie een link wil leggen met actuele vormen
van kennis- en visuele productie, worden de door mij geformuleerde karakteristieken
gebruikt om de oorspronkelijke ontwerpprincipes van authentieke
kunsteducatie aan te vullen en te herzien. Op grond daarvan is een
model ontworpen met concrete richtlijnen voor de inrichting en uitvoering
van authentiek kunstonderwijs. Een van de belangrijkste toevoegingen
aan het model is de introductie van een aanvullend leerdomein voor
authentieke kunsteducatie. Oorspronkelijk benadrukt authentieke kunsteducatie
met name de connecties tussen de informele beeldcultuur van de
leerling en de professionele kunstwereld. Ik heb daaraan het domein van
‘lokale en mondiale contexten’ toegevoegd, om aan te geven dat visuele productie
niet los gezien kan worden van de sociaal-culturele contexten waaruit
populaire beeldcultuur en kunst ontstaan en waarop zij reageren. Deze
toevoeging benadrukt het thematische, discursieve en reflectieve karakter van
authentieke kunsteducatie.
Prototype en evaluatiefase
Hoofdstuk 7 beschrijft hoe de werking van de herziene ontwerpprincipes en
het nieuwe model voor authentieke kunsteducatie in de educatieve praktijk
wordt onderzocht. Gedurende de prototypefase ontwerpt een groep van 20
kunstdocenten een beeldende lessenserie voor de eigen school of academie,
op basis van het model voor authentieke kunsteducatie. Een zesdaagse
zomerschool fungeert daarbij als ontwerp- en onderzoeksomgeving waarin
docenten verschillende ontwerpcycli doorlopen. Ze worden hierbij ondersteund
door kunstenaars, theoretici en werkveldexperts die input leveren en
feedback geven op het ontwerpproces. In de evaluatiefase worden de ontworpen
lessenseries geïmplementeerd in de praktijk van de deelnemende
docenten. Het educatieve ontwerpproces en de ervaringen en leeropbrengsten
die zijn opgedaan tijdens de uitvoering van de lessenseries worden
geëvalueerd met docenten en leerlingen. Nieveen’s (2009) criteria voor
hoogwaardige educatieve interventies worden gebruikt om de relevantie,
samenhang, bruikbaarheid en effectiviteit van de ontworpen lessenseries
te bespreken.
In hoofdstuk 8 worden de data die zijn verzameld in de prototypefase
besproken en geanalyseerd. Op basis van de data kan ik concluderen
dat de deelnemende docenten de richtlijnen uit het model voor authen tieke
kunsteducatie kunnen hanteren en erin geslaagd zijn om relevant en samenhangend
onderwijsmateriaal te ontwikkelen. De deelnemende docenten rapporteren
dat het model hen uitdaagt om hun didactische ontwerpproces op
een meer creatieve, holistische, coöperatieve en systematische manier dan
gebruikelijk te benaderen: het stelt hen in staat om betekenisvolle leerinhou-
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den te selecteren op het snijvlak van populaire cultuur, actuele kunst en
maatschappelijke kwesties; hun lessenseries zijn meer dan gebruikelijk
gericht op einddoelen en een brede competentieontwikkeling; en het model
biedt hen een structuur om het ontwerpproces systematischer en in samenwerking
met collega’s vorm te geven.
Hoofdstuk 9 beschrijft de ervaringen van docenten en leerlingen
tijdens de uitvoering van de lessenseries. De (leer)ervaringen zijn verzameld
via interviews met de twintig docenten die hun zelfontworpen lessen hebben
uitgevoerd en door de 302 learner reports van leerlingen en studenten
die eraan deelnamen. De evaluatiedata laten zien dat de lessenseries, naast
innovatief en samenhangend, ook bruikbaar en effectief zijn.
Het innovatieve karakter van de lessenseries wordt onderstreept
door de learner reports, waarin meer dan twee derde van de leerlingen en
studenten aangeeft dat de lessen ‘anders dan anders’ waren. Van die groep
vindt 23,5% dat de lessen een andere pedagogische/didactische aanpak hadden;
21,4% vindt dat ze meer vrijheid kregen; 14,9% geeft aan dat ze andere
creatieve technieken leerden; 8,3% vindt dat ze meer buitenschools leerden
en 7,8% ervaart dat ze meer hebben samengewerkt met anderen. Met betrekking
tot deze laatste aspecten geven docenten aan dat het leren buiten
school en de interactie met ‘buitenstaanders’ een positief effect heeft op de
motivatie en de verantwoordelijkheid voor het leerproces van de leerling.
Ofschoon niet alle vooraf gestelde leerdoelen zijn behaald, ervaren
de docenten de lessen als effectief wat betreft de leerdoelen die ermee
behaald zijn. De data uit de learner reports laten zien dat de lessenseries
leeropbrengsten geneerden in verschillende kennisdomeinen: cognitief,
technisch, interpersoonlijk en affectief. Daarbij valt op dat meer dan de helft
van de leerervaringen behoren tot het cognitieve domein. Een ander opvallend
resultaat is dat de data uit de learner reports wijzen op een positieve
correlatie tussen ‘ideevorming’, ‘leren van anderen’ en het bestuderen van
kunst, visuele cultuur en maatschappelijke thema’s. Mijn interpretatie van
dit resultaat is dat het creatieve proces wordt bevorderd wanneer leerlingen
samenhangende bronnen bestuderen uit het domein van de kunsten, de
populaire cultuur en de sociaal-culturele contexten.
De data uit de prototype- en evaluatiefase bieden ook zicht op de
relatie tussen het model voor authentieke kunsteducatie en de inhoud,
didactiek en resultaten van de geïmplementeerde lessenseries. De ontworpen
lessenseries weerspiegelen de belangrijkste ontwerpprincipes van
authentieke kunsteducatie, die bovendien als samenhangend worden
ervaren door de deelnemers aan de lessen.
Verbindingen tussen kunst, populaire cultuur en maatschappelijke
thema’s. De meeste leerlingen en studenten bestudeerden thema’s, bronnen
en artistieke methodes uit zowel de kunsten en populaire cultuur als uit de
brede maatschappelijke context. Docenten rapporteren positieve ervaringen
met de hedendaagse kunstvormen die in de lessen aan bod kwamen.
Leerlingen ervoeren actuele kunst soms als ‘vreemd’ of ‘moeilijk’, maar soms
bleek hedendaagse kunst juist verrassend toegankelijk en herkenbaar voor
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Summary
hen. In de meeste lessen werden kunst en visuele cultuur in een brede
sociaal-culturele context besproken, wat leerlingen aanzet tot kritisch
denken en maatschappelijk geëngageerde kunstproductie. Sociaal-culturele
thema’s versterken de cognitieve inhoud van de lessen en maken ze toegankelijker
voor leerlingen die minder geïnteresseerd zijn in kunst. Docenten
geven aan dat populaire cultuur leerlingen kan helpen om verbindingen te
leggen tussen bekende en minder bekende kunstvormen. Echter, de data
laten zien dat jongeren niet klakkeloos als experts van populaire en digitale
cultuur moeten worden beschouwd. Ook degenen die zeer actief zijn op het
digitale vlak blijken lang niet altijd bekend met de populaire thema’s en
digitale audiovisuele technieken die in de lessen aan de orde kwamen.
Complexe taaksituaties. In de meeste lessen werden complexe
taaksituaties gerealiseerd die van leerlingen en studenten vereisen dat ze
verschillende soorten kennis en vaardigheden integreren, zoals plannen,
het verrichten van creatief onderzoek en het nemen van besluiten.
Deelnemers werden uitgedaagd om initiatief te nemen en hun persoonlijke
interesses en meningen te betrekken bij de opdracht. Docenten benadrukken
de prominente rol van creatief onderzoek in de lessenseries, zelfs wanneer
ze geïmplementeerd zijn in een traditioneel ‘versnipperd’ lesrooster.
Dit wordt bevestigd door de data van de deelnemende leerlingen en studenten:
12,8% van de door hen gerapporteerde leerervaringen zijn gerelateerd
aan creativiteit en artistiek onderzoek. De lessenseries weerspiegelen de
interdisciplinaire en conceptuele benadering zoals die gebruikelijk is onder
hedendaagse kunstenaars: de opdrachten zijn gericht op het ontwikkelen
van een idee waarbij leerlingen door onderzoek en experiment de meest
geschikte materialen en technieken selecteren. Het is opvallend dat leerlingen
bij de opdrachten vaak audiovisuele en digitale beeldende technieken
gebruikten, wat niet altijd gangbaar is in het beeldend onderwijs.
De klas functioneert als leergemeenschap. De meeste lessenseries zijn
erop gericht om de klas als leergemeenschap te laten functioneren door het
stimuleren van (online) interactie tussen klasgenoten, het erkennen van
eigen expertises van deelnemers en door hen gebruik te laten maken van
coöperatieve productievormen zoals teamwerk, sampling en remixing. Uit
de data komt naar voren dat samenwerking en teamwerk gebruikelijker zijn
in kunstlessen op de middelbare school dan in het hoger onderwijs. In verschillende
lessenseries werd geëxperimenteerd met zaken als presentaties
buiten de school, online interactie met anderen, het inzetten van externe
experts en het vormen van peer-assessment, maar deze aspecten zijn niet
altijd succesvol uitgevoerd, of er werd zelfs helemaal vanaf gezien naarmate
het einde van de lessenserie dichterbij kwam.
Reflectie en implicaties
Hoofdstuk 10 blikt terug op het onderzoeksproces en beantwoordt de centrale
onderzoeksvraag. Conclusie is dat de ontwikkelde ontwerpprincipes
voor authentieke kunsteducatie en het daarvan afgeleide model robuust
blijken in verschillende kunsteducatieve praktijksituaties. Uit de onder-
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zoeksdata komt naar voren dat het model kunstdocenten in staat stelt om
samenhangende, bruikbare en effectieve lessenseries te ontwikkelen en te
implementeren, die relevante ontwikkelingen in de hedendaagse informele
en professionele visuele praktijk weerspiegelen. De onderzochte lespraktijken
dragen de kenmerken van authentieke kunsteducatie en leveren daarnaast
nieuwe inzichten op die verwerkt kunnen worden in de nieuwste
versie van het model voor authentieke kunsteducatie. Naast de bevestiging
dat het model voor authentieke kunsteducatie ‘werkt’, levert het onderzoek
ook een aantal praktische en theoretische implicaties op voor het kunsteducatieve
veld. De belangrijkste implicaties van dit onderzoek worden hier
puntsgewijs weergegeven:
Remixing the Art Curriculum biedt inzicht in de manier waarop de kloof tussen
theorievorming en de (kunst)educatieve praktijk kan worden overbrugd
middels ontwerpgerichte methodieken waarbij onderzoekers samenwerken
met docenten en vak deskundigen. In die zin levert het onderzoek drie
soorten resultaten op: bijdragen aan het theoretische discours rond kunsteducatie,
een praktische ontwerptool voor authentieke kunsteducatie met
voorbeelden van lesmateriaal en een bijdrage aan de ontwikkeling en scholing
van docenten die deelnamen aan de zomerschool en het onderzoek.
Mijn onderzoeken onder hedendaagse informele en professionele
visuele producenten wijzen erop dat curricula voor beeldend onderwijs die
zich richten op gecanoniseerde kunstwerken, formele beeldaspecten en traditionele
materialen en technieken op twee manieren anachronistisch zijn:
ze bieden weinig mogelijkheden voor leerlingen om kunst te ervaren als iets
dat relevant is in relatie tot hun dagelijks leven en leerlingen worden niet
geïntroduceerd in de discoursen en methodieken van de hedendaagse
beeld- en kunstproductie.
Mijn studie laat zien dat de ontwerpprincipes van authentieke kunsteducatie
het ontwerp en de implementatie van innovatieve curricula voor
beeldende kunst en vormgeving stimuleren, waarbij leerlingen leren in
interactie met elkaar en hun omgeving en uitgedaagd worden om te denken
en handelen als hedendaagse beeldend kunstenaars en ontwerpers.
Authentieke kunsteducatie huist in een thematisch, opiniërend
en reflectief curriculum, waarin beeldende productie gepaard gaat met
persoonlijke en theoretische reflectie in breed sociaal-cultureel verband.
Op grond van mijn onderzoek kan ik concluderen dat zo’n brede culturele
oriëntatie op kunst en visuele cultuur de intrinsieke waarde van het kunstonderwijs
versterkt omdat er een betere aansluiting is met de actuele kunstpraktijk
buiten school en het onderwijs relevanter en toegankelijker wordt
voor verschillende soorten leerlingen.
Omdat een actueel kunstcurriculum niet meer is vast te stellen op
grond van canonieke werken, stromingen en basistechnieken, is er een
behoefte aan docenten die in staat zijn om betekenisvolle verbindingen te
leggen tussen het kunstonderwijs op school en de informele en professionele
vormen van visuele productie buiten de schoolse context. Naast peda-
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Summary
gogische kwaliteiten hebben docenten hiervoor kennis nodig van actuele
ontwikkelingen in de kunsten en de visuele cultuur, wat vaak niet gestimuleerd
wordt in de huidige schoolcultuur. Mijn onderzoek laat zien dat de
inhoud en didactisch ontwerp van kunsteducatie niet los van elkaar gezien
kunnen worden omdat kunstwerken en beelden fungeren als ontwerp organizers:
zij roepen betekenisvolle leerarrangementen op in plaats van ze te
illustreren. Een hoogwaardig, vernieuwend kunstcurriculum kan in mijn
ogen alleen gerealiseerd worden wanneer scholen erkennen dat het ontwerp
ervan een creatief proces is en wanneer zij kunstdocenten de ruimte
bieden voor collectieve vormen van educatief ontwerp.
De resultaten van mijn onderzoek laten zien dat lessenseries die
gebaseerd zijn op authentieke kunsteducatie succesvol geïmplementeerd
kunnen worden in een traditionele onderwijsomgeving. Dit resultaat staat
tegenover de populaire perceptie dat leren en doceren op basis van sociaalconstructivistische
principes alleen mogelijk is als de hele schoolorganisatie
meedoet. Mijn studie bevestigt daarmee dat authentiek (kunst)
onderwijs een flexibel sociaal-constructivistisch leerconcept is dat kan
worden afgestemd op de beperkingen en mogelijkheden van lokale educatieve
omgevingen.
Een politieke implicatie van Remixing the Art Curriculum is dat
maatschappelijke onderwerpen in combinatie met hedendaagse artistieke
methodieken zoals remixen en sociale interventies leerlingen kansen bieden
om bestaande machtsstructuren te bekritiseren of zelfs speels te verstoren.
De data in mijn onderzoek bevestigen dat deze vormen van kritische
kunstproductie realiseerbaar zijn in het algemeen vormend onderwijs.
Ik denk dat ze daar ook het meest gewenst zijn, omdat het onderwijs leerlingen
niet alleen zou moeten kwalificeren en socialiseren, maar ook ruimte
moet bieden voor persoonlijke vorming of subjectivering (Biesta, 2010).
De resultaten van mijn onderzoek benadrukken dat authentieke kunsteducatie
gedijt in een klimaat waarin docenten en leerlingen de risico’s die
voortvloeien uit een kritische interactie met de echte wereld tot op zekere
hoogte omarmen.
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
IDENTIF
PROTOTYP
ASS
REF
S
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How Contemporary Visual Practises Inspire Authentic Art Education
ICATION
IGATION
ING AND
ESSMENT
LECTION
UMMARY
ENDIXES
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308

Appendixes
Program items summer school
Remix Culture 2011
Form:
By:
Educational design sessions Work seminars Suzanne Rademaker (lecturer)
Michiel Koelink (lecturer)
Authentic art education Lecture Emiel Heijnen
(researcher)
Remixing culture in popular media and
contemporary art
Lecture
Suzanne Rademaker
Developments in contemporary art and media Lecture
Anneke Smelik (researcher)
Bastard Culture Lecture Mirko Schäfer (researcher)
Artist presentation Lecture Eboman (artist, musician)
Facebook Resistance
Video Hijack, Photohack, Soundscape,
Remix the street
Lecture and
workshop
Workshops
Tobias Leingruber (artist)
Michiel Koelink
Contemporary media art program Field trip Dutch Media Art Institute
Contemporary art program Field trip Stedelijk Museum
Course blueprints presentation
Expert panel
review session
Folkert Haanstra (researcher)
Talita Groenendijk (researcher)
Program items summer school
Remix Culture 2012
Form:
By:
Educational design sessions Work seminars Suzanne Rademaker (lecturer)
Michiel Koelink (lecturer)
Authentic art education Lecture Emiel Heijnen (researcher)
Remixing culture in popular media and
contemporary art
On and off line intersections between
remix culture, youth culture, and educational
challenges
Creativity as conversation in the interactive
audience culture of YouTube
Lecture
Lecture
Lecture
Suzanne Rademaker
Paul Duncum (researcher)
Paul Duncum
The artist as a hacker Lecture Evan Roth (artist)
Urban Hacking Workshop Evan Roth
Video Hijack, Photohack and Soundscape Workshops Michiel Koelink
Contemporary media art program Field trip Dutch Media Art Institute
Remixing economy Field trip The Art Reserve Bank
Course blueprints presentation
Expert panel
review session
Folkert Haanstra (researcher)
Mirjam van Tilburg (art educator)
Renske de Groot (museum educator)
Appendix 1: Program overview Remix Culture summer schools
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Introduction:
1. What is your work experience as a teacher
– Education
– Teaching experience, educational sector or field, types of subjects / projects
2. What motivated you to participate in this research project and the preceding summer school?
Perception of the educational design process, relationship between the design process and the
model for authentic art education
(a copy of the model for authentic art education is handed out)
3. How did you experience the design process of your course?
– What was the influence of the program of the summer course on your course blueprint?
(lectures, screenings, museum visits, workshops)
– What was the influence of the pedagogy of the summer course on your course blueprint?
(educational design methodology, peer coaching and reflection, online discussion platform)
– What are the main differences between the blueprint of your course and the final written course
plan? (Which factors contributed to these changes: school curriculum, colleagues, practical
reasons etc.)
4. How did you use the model of authentic art education during the design process?
– Did you use the model throughout the whole design process or at the beginning / the end or that
process?
– How did you operationalize the different aspects of the model?
– Which aspect of the model challenged you most during the design process; which aspect
challenged you least?
– Was this design process different from your ‘regular’ educational design process? Please explain.
Perception of the course implementation and the learning results
5. How did the course implementation proceed?
– Which moment during the course do you remember most?
– Which aspects of your course satisfied you?
– Which aspects of the course dissatisfied you? What would you improve these aspects?
6. How did the students respond to the course?
– Which student response do you remember most?
– Did the students experience this course as different from the other courses you teach? Please
explain.
7. How do you perceive the learning results of the students?
– Which of the learning goals were realized during the course? Which of the learning goals were not
or partly realized during the course?
– How did you assess the students (process and products)?
– Which final student works do you consider the best, why?
Influence of the educational model on the course implementation, the learning results and the
view of the teacher
8. Which aspect of the model was most significant during the implementation; which aspect of the
model was least significant during the implementation? Please explain.
Appendix 2: Topic interview teachers
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Appendixes
9. To what extent did the model influence your teaching?
– Subject matter and examples
– Pedagogy, various teacher roles
– Evaluation, assessment
10. To what extent did the model influence the way your students learned?
– Balance between process based and product based learning?
– Learning outcomes and student products
11. Is the model useful .....
– … as a design tool for courses / as a design tool for a full curriculum?
– … for art education / for arts education / for interdisciplinary education?
– … primarily for yourself? / in cooperation with others?
– What would you like to change in the model to improve it?
12. Did the model and the theory of authentic art education influence your view on art education?
Please explain.
13. Are there any questions you want to come back to, or do you want to add something?
End of the interview
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Prototyping phase
Why participate in summer course/
research project
Lacking content knowledge
Lacking pedagogical knowledge
Other
Influence of the summer school
On subject matter
On pedagogy
Description of the design process
Collection of sources
– Art inspired
– Iterative process
– Including popular culture
– Interdisciplinary
Group design
– Co-designing
– Individual process
– Learning community
Organization
– Artworks as REO
– Complex assignment
– Less aimed at technique
– More holistic than usual
Theme inspired
– Global themes
– Local themes
Assessment phase
Complete/task situations
Complete/complex task
Freedom/constraints
Good results
Interdisciplinary
More aimed at the student world
More theory
Production/research process
Responsibility
Learning community
Authentic evaluation
Collaboration
Criteria
Improving peer learning
Peer evaluation
Peer learning/class discussion
Sharing via internet/outside school
Teacher as coach
Teacher as expert
Teacher as learner
Meaningful connections
Activism
Authentic contexts
Conceptual/contemporary art
Enthusiasm
More theory/demands
Popular culture
Remixing/existing material
Social goals
Societal context
Technology
Appendix 3: Code trees with identified themes in the teacher interview data
312

Appendixes
Evaluation
We want to know what you learned and experienced in the course you
took during the past weeks
Fill out the questions as extensive as possible
Success!
What is your date of birth?
gender: O female O male
Name of your school/institute
Branch of study/level
Name of your teacher(s)
Appendix 4: Learner report - student questionnaire
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Part 1: open questions
Question 1 General
What did you learn or experience in the past period?
Write as many learning sentences that apply to you as possible.
Examples:
– I have noticed/seen/discovered that ….
– I have learned that ….
– I have learned how ….
Write your sentences here:
1
2
3
4
Question 2 Surprises/exceptions
You may have learned that something does not work or is not true.
Examples:
– I have noticed/seen/discovered that … is not ….
– I discovered that there are also ….
– I noticed that something can not only be done in … manner, but also in … manner.
Write your sentences here:
1
2
3
4
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Appendixes
Question 3 General about yourself
What did you learn about yourself in the past period?
Write as many learning sentences that apply to you as possible.
Examples:
– I have noticed/seen/experienced/felt that I ….
– I have learned that I think that …, because ….
– I have learned that I am good (or bad) at ….
Write your sentences here:
1
2
3
4
Question 4 Surprises/exceptions about yourself
You may also have learned that something does not work, or is not true regarding yourself.
Examples:
– I have learned that I do not ….
– I was surprised by ….
– I have learned that I can do something also in … manner.
Write your sentences here:
1
2
3
4
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Question 5
Was this course different from the usual courses in this subject?
Write down in full sentences.
Yes / No (circle), because …
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Appendixes
Part 2: Closed Questions
What is your date of birth?
gender: O female O male
6 I have experienced the course as a whole (as opposed to
isolated lessons and assignments)
7 I was allowed to use other art forms than visual art during this
course (e.g: music/sound, theatre, dance, literature)
Totally
disagree
Totally
agree
-- - +/- + + ++
8 I have learned about art and artists during this course
9 There was space for my personal knowledge and interests
in this course
10 I have learned about issues outside the arts during this course
(e.g. about the society or your surroundings)
11 I did research during this course (e.g. searching and collecting
information, experimenting, analyzing)
12 I came in contact with people outside the school during
this course
13 I was allowed to choose the materials and techniques
I preferred during this course
14 The assignments challenged me and my classmates to work
independently (e.g. collecting information, organizing, planning)
15 I have learned from others during the course (not just the teacher)
16 I was allowed to mix different art forms during this course
(e.g. music with visual art, or dance with film)
17 I could give my personal opinion in this course
18 I learned about popular culture during this course (e.g.
tv-shows, internet, comics, music video’s, films, fashion, pop
music, etcetera)
19 I collaborated with classmates during this course
20 I tried out different ideas during this course
21 I got feedback on my work via the Internet during this course
22 I gave my opinion about my classmates’ work during this course
23 At the end of the course, I presented my work
(to the class/to others)
24 At the end of the course, I explained my work
(to the class/to others)
25 I assessed the work of classmates during this course
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Remixing the Art Curriculum
Category Content Example
What did you learn during this course? (Questions 1 - 4)
Cooperation
Peer learning/group
interaction
Character/personal
qualities
Freedom/independence
Production process
Creativity/artistic
research
Experiencing
involvement/pride/
talent
Not experiencing
involvement/pride/
talent
Digital techniques
Audio-visual
techniques
Other visual
techniques
Theatre, dance and
music
Analysing/criticizing
sources
Popular visual culture
Art
Societal issues/
contexts
Other
Learning experiences related to cooperation
between students.
Learning experiences dealing with peer
interaction (except for cooperation), like
students advise, discussions and class
presentations.
Learning experiences related to character
and general personal qualities.
Learning experiences dealing with
experiencing independence, having a lot
of choice and the freedom to plan your
own learning process.
Learning experiences dealing with the way
how art is produced and how a production
processes is structured and organized.
Learning experiences related to creative
thinking and artistic research.
Learning experiences referring to things
students liked or positive art related skills
they discovered.
Learning experiences referring to things
students disliked or negative art related
skills they discovered.
Learning experiences related to the
acquisition of art related computer
techniques, like video and photo editing.
Learning experiences related to the
acquisition of audio-visual techniques,
like photography and film.
Learning experiences referring to the
acquisition of visual techniques other
than digital and audio-visual techniques.
Learning experiences referring to the
acquisition of techniques related to dance,
music or theatre.
Learning experiences related to analyzing
and criticizing sources.
Learning experiences related to a better
or different understanding of popular
visual culture.
Learning experiences related to a better
or different understanding of art.
Learning experiences related to a better
or different understanding of societal
issues, or non-art topics.
All the experiences that do not fit the
other categories.
“I learned to cooperate”
“I learned how to give
someone a compliment”
“I learned that I get easily
distracted”
“I learned that I could do what
I wanted”
“I have learned how to make a
video production from the
beginning”
“I learned that it takes a lot of
time to develop an idea”
“I found out that I have a
good eye for art”
“I learned that art is not my
thing”
“I learned how to work with
Photoshop Elements”
“I have learned how to use a
camera”
“I learned how to draw
something in perspective”
“I learned how to make beats
on the computer”
“I learned to write an art
review”
“I learned to look at
commercials in a different
manner”
“I learned that art has many
different aspects”
“I learned thins about
Afganistan, and the living
conditions there”
“I learned that I have to be at
school more often”
Appendix 5: Learner report - coding schemes
318

Appendixes
Category Content Example
Was this course different from our regular courses? (Question 5)
No, this was a
regular course
Yes, not specified
All answers starting with “no, ….”
Answers starting with “yes, …”
but without a specific motivation.
“The course was pretty
normal to me”
“The course was very
unusual”
Yes, different
subject matter
Yes, more freedom
Yes, more theory
Yes, more aimed
at social contexts
Yes, different
materials/techniques
Yes, different
pedagogical
approach
Yes, more aimed
at ideas
Yes, more
collaboration
Yes, more
outside school
Other
The course’s theme and/or the subject
matter were perceived as other than usual.
The course offered more freedom or
independence for students than usually.
The course had more theoretical
components that usually.
The course was more aimed at societal
context than usually.
Students used different materials
or techniques during the course.
The course had a different pedagogical
or organizational structure than usual.
The course was more aimed at idea
development or creative research.
The course was more aimed at
collaboration than usually.
Students worked more outside the
school during the course.
Sentences that expressed that the
students were unable to answer the
question, because they had no prior
experiences with such course, or
sentences that did not answer the
question at all.
“We hardly talk about games
at school”
“We had to do a lot by
ourselves”
“We discussed more artists
than usually”
“The social critique was new”
“Normally we work with our
hands, not with digital
equipment”
“We had to assess each
others work”
“We worked on a practical
project in which our ideas
were central”
“We had to work together
with the film students”
“We visited an art centre
during the course”
“This was the first time I took
this subject”
319

Remixing the Art Curriculum
320

How Contemporary Visual Practises Inspire Authentic Art Education
321

Remixing the Art Curriculum
322

Tables and figures
Table 1: Design principles of authentic art
education
Table 2: Comparing psychological experimentation
and design-based research methods
Table 3: Characteristics of communities of
practice combined with participatory
cultures
Table 4: Characteristics of informal visual
networks
Table 5: Working definition: literature-based
characteristics of socially engaged art
practices integrated in the communities of
practice model.
Table 6: Criteria for theory-based sampling
based on the working definition of socially
engaged art practices
Table 7: Match between criteria in category b
and c with the selected practices
Table 8: Updated characteristics of socially
engaged practices, segment Domain.
Table 9: Updated characteristics of socially
engaged practices, segments Domain and
Community.
Table 10: Characteristics of socially engaged
practices
Table 11: Most significant similarities and
differences between informal visual
networks and socially engaged artists.
Table 12: How characteristics of informal and
professional visual producers inform the
design principles of authentic art
education
Table 13: Central unit of analysis of the
prototyping and evaluation phase, sorted
by educational level
Table 14: Distribution of the reported learning
sentences over De Groot’s classification of
learning objectives.
Table 15: Thematically classified student
learning statements (absolute)
Table 16: Thematically classified student
learning statements (percentages based
on averages per case)
Table 17: Thematically classified student
learning statements, divided over
knowledge domains
Table 18: Did students perceive the course as
different?
Table 19: What students found most different
about the course
Table 20: Exploratory factor analysis (varimax)
Table 21: Scales derived from the factor
analysis
Table 22: Scores on scale 1: Complex Task
Situations
Table 23: Scores on scale 2: Learning
Community
Table 24: Scores on scale 3: Meaningful
Connections
Figure 1: Quadrant model of scientific research
(Stokes, 1997, p. 73)
Figure 2: Main research phases of Remixing
the Art Curriculum
Figure 3: Research design overview of
Remixing the Art Curriculum
Figure 4: Evan Roth - Graffiti Taxonomy: Paris
Figure 5: Valtteri Mäki - Viking3
Figure 6: Stills from the Yugoslavian Radio
Television news broadcast indent
Figure 7: Characteristics of informal visual
networks mirrored with characteristics of
traditional school art curricula
Figure 8: Inaho & Kirui - Rock is love
Figure 9: ‘Wing’ - detail of a cosplay costume
Figure 10: Duna, female graffiti writer
Figure 11: pARTI Art Production Group -
Big Momma Chair by Aloë
Figure 12: Time/Bank - Presentation on
dOCUMENTA (13)
Figure 13: Francis Alÿs - When Faith Moves
Mountains
Figure 14: F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab - Free
Universal Construction Kit
Figure 15: Authentic Boys - Rehearsing
Revolution
Figure 16: Aram Bartholl - Dead Drops
Figure 17: BijaRi - Recounting On Us
Figure 18: Jeanne van Heeswijk - Freehouse:
Radicalizing the Local. Presentation at
A City Shaped, Stuk, Leuven
Figure 19: José Antonio Vega Macotela -
Time Divisa
Figure 20: The Propeller Group - Television
Commercial for Communism
Figure 21: F.A.T. Lab - How To Build a Fake
Google Street View Car
Figure 22: Pilvi Takala - The Trainee
Figure 23: Wandschappen - Alocasia XL,
black felt
Figure 24: Initial template, based on the
theoretical working definition
Figure 25: Revised and updated codebook
after coding all the data
Figure 26: Tentative model for the subject
matter of authentic art education
Figure 27: Tentative model for the subject
matter and pedagogy of authentic art
education
Figure 28: Classification of learning objectives
(De Groot, 1980a, p. 2.3 Gro. B10;
Van Kesteren, 1993, p. 67)
Figure 29: Blueprint for the course ‘Hack
Gender Stereotypes’
Figure 30: Main research phases of Remixing
the Art Curriculum
Figure 31: Tentative model for authentic art
education, as applied during the prototyping
and assessment phase
Figure 32: Finalized model for authentic art
education
323

Remixing the Art Curriculum
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338

Curriculum Vitae
Emiel Heijnen (Tegelen, 1970) is an art/media educator and researcher
at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. His fields of interest are interdisciplinary
arts and media education, contemporary art, popular culture,
technology and urban culture. He studied art and education at the
Hogeschool Katholieke Leergangen Sittard (1987-1991) and at the
Utrecht School of the Arts (1991-1994). Between 1994-2005 he taught
art, media and design at the Johan de Witt College in The Hague.
Emiel had a practice as freelance graphic designer (Touch of Evil,
1998-2011) and worked as educational advisor for different schools
and institutions, including KPC Groep, Unic, Amadeus Lyceum, Fonds
voor Cultuurparticipatie, LKCA, SLO and Topteam Creatieve Industrie.
He writes frequently about research and developments in contemporary
art education, is a co-author of the interdisciplinary arts textbook
De Bespiegeling and a member of the international research group
Visual Culture Learning Communities. He has initiated (inter)national
education projects including Media-Connection (2008), Filmen met
je Mobiel (2009), MediaCultuur (2009) and the summer school Remix
Culture (2011 and 2012).
339

Remixing the Art Curriculum
2015 Emiel Heijnen
ISBN: 978-90-813681-0-0
Design: Kummer & Herrman
Translations: The Text Company
Printing: Platform P
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0
International License.
The author has striven to ensure that in using
illustrations all legal rights have been taken into
proper account. However, parties who believe
they can claim legal rights are invited to apply
to hi@emielheijnen.net.
340

Remixing the Art Curriculum aims to provide an insight
into design-based methodologies that can be applied
to reduce the gap between formal art education and
contemporary real world visual practices. The study
is based on the premise that art has an intrinsic social
value and that the relevancy of art education increases
when it addresses both the emergent needs and interest
of the student and contemporary developments in
the professional art domain.
The empirical study explores the present-day
practices and competencies of international artists
and informal visual producers. These findings inform
an updated pedagogical framework for authentic art
education, which is implemented and evaluated at
different schools. The second part of the dissertation
discusses the experiences of 20 teachers and 302
students with the framework of authentic art education.
The paramount implication of Remixing the Art
Curriculum is that it exemplifies how design principles
of authentic art education can stimulate the design and
implementation of innovative learning and teaching
arrangements, which reflect on and discuss contemporary
(visual) culture, challenging students to think and
act more like professional creative producers.